Whoa, I’m 38 and was one of the first kids I know of that had a phone in their bedroom. It was one of the 10,000 pound bakelite black desk phone jobbies,
Just a few weeks ago I threw it in the trash. I mangled the wires. I have a different rotary dial phone in the basement for when the power goes out like it did last October and my girlfriend called to check on me.
Basic touch tone phones also use only telco line power and will work during a power outage. Rule of thumb: if your phone just plugs into the jack with no ancillary power supply, it’ll be as reliable as the telephone network.
Occassionally, though, the tape would get messed up with a long loop of tape hanging out of the cartridge, and could not be played in this condition. By pulling on the correct side of the loop with a quick flick of the wrist, you could impart enough inertia to the roll of tape to cause all the slack to be taken up so that the tape could be played again. If you pulled the wrong side, the loop got larger…and that is what I would be talking about if I ever mentioned “rewinding” an 8 track tape.
Most of the older people I know are like my parents, who are very geek and early adopters of almost everything. I knew people who had extensive cassette collections until recently, but the LPs were mostly gone, having been played to death and replaced with CDs.
I should also note that in 1988, I was seven years old. I had a turntable until about two years ago. About half of my college friends were not quite sure how you worked the damn thing, and were too scared to touch it.
I’ve got a pink rotary phone in my pottery studio. The previous owners left it behind, and we modified it with a plug-in connector. The spot where the phone number is usually displayed has a black-and-white photo of a dog.
I love my old phone!
If the OP’s boss has the mondo fingernails, she may not be able to dial a phone without one of those plastic phone-dialers with the little ball on the end. Much more effective than a ballpoint. The longer ones looked a little like cigarette holders. Or fountain pens.
Ditto (though I am older: 36)
I keep a wired push-button phone for the same reason. Well, that and it has a clear cover with lights in it, so it’s cool. 
I had a rotary phone circa 1991. At that time touch tone service WAS an extra cost service. (This was US West I think).
(when I ordered service, a party line WAS an option! yes, in 1991!)
I eventually got a touch tone phone and it worked without touch tone service (also, a different company took over the local telephone service, I don’t rememeber which came 1st)
When I moved I put the rotary phone in the basement. I got a second TT phone (a used desk phone for $4), this is now in the basemenet and the rotary is now in my detatched garage
Brian
Useful tidbit of information (or it was back in the day): You can dial out on a rotary phone (or any phone that uses pulse dialing) by simply tapping the pattern of numbers with the disconnect button. For instance, if you wanted to dial 555-6431 you would pick up the phone off the cradle (disconnect switch), tap the disconnect 5 times quickly, short pause, 5 times, short pause, 5 times, short pause, 6 times, short pause, 4 times, short pause, 3 times, short pause, 1 time, and then it would connect you.
I discovered this once when the rotary part of my phone died.
That is, in fact, how the rotary dialing operated. A cam mechanism attached to the dial shaft would open and close a pair of switch contacts connected across the switchhook.
Incidentally, switchhook signaling is still in limited use today: call waiting uses a switchhook signal to transfer between held calls.
From Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982):
“If you need me, just call. You know how to dial, don’t you? You just put your finger in the hole and make tiny little circles.”
Haven’t you heard? 8 track rewinders are obsolete. They’ve been replaced by these. It’s said they’ll work with CD’s, as well.
I’m 22. We had a rotary until I was about 12.
We rewind our DVDs by hand. 
We really did pick up a videtape crank over here one time, though. You stuck in one sprocket and turned the crank until it was rewound. We used it once just to try it, but we bought it mainly because we thought it was funny. But it was not a joke item, it was for real.
We have an original wall-mounted touch-tone phone that we used when our original cordless phone broke.
To answer the OP: My grandparents (both sets) had rotary phones forever. It’s only been recently that my grandmother has embraced the beauty of the cordless phone, having been convinced of its utility.
ISTR some article in a publication aimed at seniors that a rotary phone next to the bed is a good idea because it’s likely to be more intuitive for them than a more modern phone because of the lack of feature buttons.
Robin
On a related note, where can I buy a rotary phone?
Was in Berlin, Ohio a couple weeks ago. It’s Amish country, and we were in an antique store. Saw a red rotary phone for $69. Is that what they go for? Anyone know of on an online place I can get them for a bit cheaper? 
EBay.
semi hijack…
When my daughter was 5, I showed her my mom’s electronic typwriter. It had an LCD screen, that allowed you to edit/correct the current line of type before hitting “return”
I typed out my daughter’s name on it, and let her type a bit.
Then I hit return
As the page printed out she said “Cool! They made a computer with out the screen!”
and here is a slightly more poignant comment
My grandmother was 77 when she made this comment:
"When I was young, you operated machines by pulling levers andturning cranks. When your mom was a little girl, machines were operated by turning knobs and flicking switches and turning dials, now you operate machines by pushing buttons and doing things with a mouse… your kids, when they grow up, will operate machines by just (as she put it) “thinking hard”…
cool kid, cool grandma…
Regards
FML