Old home landlines just had a single line for the whole house. If you picked up a phone, you could listen to and talk on whatever the conversation was.
Plenty of affairs were discovered by the wife picking up the phone to make a call while the husband was in his home office.
Oh shit another one! lol. I totally understand how landlines work, but thanks for trying to help. It still doesn’t really make sense in the context of a file download being interrupted though. Only the first person to pick up would be interrupting it
Regardless, “moms” is absolutely a word. Y’all just don’t know/use it. I understand your logic, so there’s no need real to explain it. What’s amusing is the jump to believing it’s a whole other thing instead of just a nickname you don’t know/have yet to learn
Like, I mean, some folks in the south (or east) call their grandparents meemaw. That was a new one for me. Not the exact same, but you get the idea
landlines were shared within a single household - you could pick up the phone on the headset upstairs, and someone in the kitchen downstairs would already be talking to someone. you’d have to apologize and hang up quickly because you just intruded on their conversation. thus, two people could pick up the phone at the same time. Frankly I think that’s giving AngryMan too much credit, I’m convinced they’re just an idiot who doesn’t review before they post.
I just felt really old realizing this was something that someone younger might legitimately need to be explained to them.
Don’t forget about party lines, where you could pick up the phone on your neighbors.
Party lines were especially popular in rural areas; Dozens of farmhouses would share a single party line, so farmers could just pick up the phone and chat with whoever happened to be on the phone already. It was a huge source of socialization for people who otherwise would have been almost entirely isolated. Farmhouses often have literal miles in between each house, so socialization was difficult simply due to the distance. Party lines were basically pre-internet Discord servers, and you just shared the server with all of your neighbors.
Many farm houses had two phone lines coming into the house; One private line for personal calls, and a party line for the neighbors.