The Mother Of All Viruses

My family moved into a new house in the mid to late 90s. Being a teenager, the first thing I did was set up our computer and get AOL running. At some point later in the day, my mom went to use the phone, and instead of a dial tone, there was a weird beeping. She was convinced I had gone on the Internet and somehow downloaded a virus to our phone line, and there was nothing I could do to convince her otherwise.

She then made me call up technical support and sit on hold for over an hour to get the virus out of our phone. I was a shy kid who hated being on the phone talking to strangers, anyway, much less when I knew the thing I had to ask was moronic. So, when I finally got a tech on the line, I couldn’t stop cringing as I explained the “problem” to them. Shockingly, their response was that it wasn’t possible to get a virus on a phone line. Somehow them saying it was acceptable.

Oh, and we found out later that the person that previously had the phone line had set up voicemail on the line, and that beeping instead of dial tone was used to indicate a message had been left.