I am an electrical engineer and over the years have got many rotary phones for free. Not only that, they are from different countries. The one this kid was looking at was French and had some words in French (Police, Fire Department, etc)
I live in a huge house so I have installed a few around the house so there is always one within reach. I never really use them as I have a cordless phone and the phone that I normally use is a touchtone. But they come in handy when the phone rings and the cordless is not at hand, or when I am on the cordless and want to say something (like my credit card number) that I do not want anybody to hear and such situations.
A couple more things I’ve overheard from younger people:
A girl being surprised to hear people actually had vinyl records at home (she had seen them in juke boxes and assumed they were specific for juke boxes).
I was recently at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and a young man of about 20 was asking his father if this was “the same war as Saving Private Ryan”.