One of my friends in junior high had one (I’m 22–this would have been around when I was 13), and I’d seen a few before then. So I know how to use one. Even if I hadn’t, I’d probably know how from watching Mickey Mouse cartoons as a kid.
We have an old dial phone for play, and what kids invariably do is stick their fingers into the hole and try to push the printed numbers underneath as if there were buttons down there. My toddler also has a toy designed to teach basic living skills - a series of different switches that each open a section of the toy, revealing a different farm animal…you’ve seen it before, I’m sure, I just can’t for the life of me figure out what to call it. Anyway, there’s a a toggle switch, a beveled switch, a sliding switch, a push button and a rotary dial switch. The rotary dial is the very last one any toddler masters, I think because they don’t see us do it anymore. People learn best by imitation, so it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a dying skill. It’s only “obvious” if you’ve seen it done.
My mother was the last person to have all rotary phones that I know, and that lasted until I was in college and got the balls to buy new phones and switch them while she was out. Not a mean feat, since it meant rewiring stuff - all her phones were hardwired into the walls. I’m 32 now.
Isn’t that why god invented ball point pens? 
Okay…I read “rotary BREASTS” and instantly thought that phones are the least of your worries.
31 and I know how to use them. Never had one, and I can’t remember where I used them - India, maybe? Possibly.
32, and used one regularly until my teen years. And agree with those that say, it’s not that hard to figure out.
Unlike a modern cell phone where most of them have eleventy-billion features, of which at least ten billion are the same as everyone else’s, but the menus are arranged differently, so while it’s easy to just dial a number if you’ve got one, it can be a pain in the neck to figure out where the recent calls button on someone else’s new cell phone is.
My parents still have one at their house that I’ve used all my life. I’m 26.
[Sign o’ the times hijack]
:smack:
My 2 year old daughter just picked up a toy shower head broken off her doll’s bathtub- it looks like a handheld showerhead in pink plastic
“Phone!” she declared, and held it to the side of her head. I guess I was still thinking of this thread, 'cause I asked my husband, “Now, how does she know that looks like a phone? She’s never seen an old phone handset!”
“Um, it looks like a Bluetooth. I think that’s the phone she means.”
Sure enough, she’s trying to hook it over her ear.
[/hijack]
I always thought there was something pleasingly tactile about the action of dialling on a rotary phone. The soft little click-click-click you can feel as it rotates through the detents, and the nice whirring noise it makes when you release it. And film scenes, like Robert Redford labouriously dialling his contact numbers in All The President’s Men… they just wouldn’t be the same on a push button phone. I realise this is silly nostalgia, you’ll humour an old man.
I still have a rotary wall model in my kitchen.
It came with the house. I have no intention of ever replacing it. It’s a beautiful thing.
I had a toy rotary phone when I was a kid and I still remember pretending to make calls on it. (Those were the days.) I don’t think I’ve ever actually used a real rotary phone though, although I wouldn’t be phased by it. I’m 21.
Still using a rotary dial phone. My folks found it at a flea market about 10 years ago. A rotary dial handset cannot be beat when it comes to slamming it down to abruptly end a conversation. The ungodly loud ring is also a plus, especially when waking the dead.
The last 4 letters of the prefix on the dial spell out my first name.
I’m 26, and I remember using one at my grandmother’s house in EBF Maine. I lived there for 6 months when I was 6. She had this huge house and barn in the middle of acres and acres of land. I hated it, except for the apple trees.
I know how to use one, but I never have for myself.
We had a rotary phone until I was in my early teens. We were also on a party line. I’m 29.
Turn the crank, with each turn corresponding to one ring on the line – each party in the neighbourhood has its own number of rings, so if you want John you crank/ring three times, if you want Elsie you crank/ring four times, etc. If you want the operator, just crank it a bunch of times.
What? Oh, you mean them new-fangled phones.
(We used a hand crank phone at our camp in New Brunswick when I was young, but at our home we had finger dial rotary phones until the late 80s. I’m now in my mid 40s.)
24, and I know how to use one.
Played with a plastic one as a kid and we had one for quite awhile. Grandma still has one in her basement (that’s hooked up to the line).
I have a rotary phone somewhere. I used to have it in my living room because it was funny watching people hesitate when they wanted to make a call. 
I’m not using it right now because there is a loose wire in the handset somewhere, so people can hear me but I can’t hear them. I may fix it one of these days.
I’m 25, and I can use one. In fact, I have one, and only stopped using it when I got my landline disconnected about a year ago.
Yeah, I think anyone should be able to figure out how to use a rotary phone. But then again, anyone should be able to figure out how to use a cell phone, but my father, who has a PHD in engineering, hates to use them because he can’t get them to work for him. He has my mother call. It’s all a matter of what we’re used to, and the need to know.
I make it a point to keep an old rotary phone in the filing cabinet, for those times when the power goes out. Wide-spread outages would render cell phones and cordless phones useless, but the old rotary-dial will still work.
I have to disagree with this, and similar sentiments that the woman in the OP is stupid or an idiot. It is, indeed, entirely possible that she’s never seen one in person, nor seen one in a movie or television show. Not knowing how to use one under these circumstances is perfectly understandable, since she hasn’t seen one, doesn’t know what it looks like or has any idea what one is even. I’ve no doubt if she actually was presented one, she would have little difficulty figuring out how to use it.