I only have the four numbers on it - 3,6,9,12. Generally I like them to be in Roman numerals, too, but this was the prettiest watch for the price ($12.99!!!) and so I went with it.
That’s another thing that makes me feel old - people asking me “how do you tell time on that?” Sigh. But I’ve never worn a digital watch and have gotten that from day 1.
I’m used to the ma’am now.
Even though most kids have never seen a rotary phone, Fisher Price still makes this classic toy:
My favorite watch is one I just can’t wear very often because it’s getting old and fragile. It’s a Swatch from ca. 1987, and I think one of the rarest they ever made. it’s black gloss numbers and hands on a black matte face. Confuses the hell out of people.
Only if you eventually untied her and allowed her to live.
Otherwise you are what Fark calls Old and Busted.
I have a rotary phone in my bedroom. I treasure it for the sound the rotary dial makes with each number and for the sound of an actual mechanical ringer. It weighs a ton and is made from metal and bakelite.
Modern phones are cheap, insubstantial pieces of shit. They make all sorts of irritating electronic beeps and boops and can’t properly be said to ring at all.
An old fashioned Ma Bell rotary phone is like a vintage Colt 1911. Substantial. Dependable. Meant to last a lifetime.
These newer phones are like Lorcins. Shoddy. Undependalble. Disposable.
Isn’t that five numbers? 
I have 3-4 analog watches that I rotate through. I also have a digital but I only wear it running because of its many other, more relevant functions (chrono, split time, heartmeter, etc).
My wife has a couple analog watches, one of which only has markings of some kind at 3-6-9-12, and I don’t know how she tells time on it. The face is so small compared to the hands that the best you can get is within 10 or 15 minutes.
Anyway, you know you’re old when a girl at your kid’s birthday party asks if they can watch a movie in the playroom and you say sorry, you can’t because the VCR in that room is broken, and she looks at you and says “v… c… r…?”
So if you didn’t learn, how do you know it was a few minutes? 
I love my analog watch. My almost 7 year old has been learning to tell time on an analog, because we insisted he had to tell time that way before we’d buy him a digital watch. He’s pretty good at it.
When I was a kid we switched to the lightweight rotary phones, where it was so easy to dial a number. Then I’d get to grandma’s house, and her big, black phone you could use to bludgeon people, and I’d have to redial my home phone number 2 or 3 times, with a pencil, because we had a zero in our phone number and the damned pencil would always slip out before I could move the dial all the way. Using just a finger to move the dial on that thing would hurt.
My husband and I always lament that our sons won’t get to experience Star Wars fresh. My older son hasn’t seen any Star Wars movies, and he already knows that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. Man, I remember the shock seeing that scene in the theater. Bah.
I haven’t done that yet, but have done something sort of the opposite.
I have gone to push my glasses up more than once, and poked myself in the face or eye! It is then I realize I am not wearing my glasses. UGH.
Plus it’s much more satisfying to hang up on someone when you’re using the old, heavy phones. What do angsty teenagers do nowadays, angrily jab the “end” button? Flip the phone shut, testily?
I tried to explain to my nephews (18 & 20) how when I was young my grandparents had a party line. “What, like a 900 number?”
After I explained the concept of sharing your phone line with some stranger the younger one commented “Screw that, they should have just gotten a cell phone.”:smack:
(Oh, and I love the sound of rotary phones. FWWT!! ta-ta-ta-ta-ta)
HA!
You forgot the obligatory toss of the gadget into the nearest flat surface that causes just a part of it to break as opposed to the entire thing.
I miss hanging up on people and having there still be the echo of a bell lingering in the air for a second or two after.
A story I heard second hand–from “Sally.” (Names changed to protect the innocent):
It’s the day after a co-worker’s birthday. Let’s call him Joe. Joe walks in that morning with a bad limp. Another co-worker, let’s call her Sally, says, “Hey, Joe, you all right? Bummer having a sore leg on your birthday!”
Joe says, “Yeah, I’ll be ok,” and tries to change the subject.
Sally keeps talking about it–asking about how he hurt it, if he was celebrating, etc. etc. Joe avoids it. Sally keeps pushing. Finally, Joe says, in an exasperated whisper:
“I blew out a hammy fuckin’ my girlfriend last night!”
Sally says, “Well…happy 30th, right?”
My husband is 26 years old, has a degree in engineering, and is quite good at math. He has trouble telling time on analog clocks and doing basic arithmetic in his head. It confuses me.
People in high school must have just missed rotary phones. My grandparents had a gigantic green rotary phone on the table by their bed. It eventually died when it was something like 25, 30 years old. Lessee…my cousins who are in high school now would have been toddlers when they got rid of it. I loved using that thing. Shhhhhh–toctoctoctoc-tac…
I love that they still make the Chatter Phone! It’s fascinating for kids. When we were little, one of my cousins had a Fisher Price Chatter Phone that I coveted.
When the young woman I find really cute makes a point of mentioning her father’s age, and it is younger than I am.
People in high school now? Not even close. I’m 40 and I’ve never in my memory lived in a house with a rotary phone.
Seriously? I’m 41 and we had 3 of them in my parents’ house until some time after I moved away to college in 1985. I think they got rid of them prior to 1990. And it wasn’t because they broke, no way. Those things still work. Since then, they’ve gone through 5-6 gee-whiz-bang feature-packed gizmos.
I saw a flyer for free flu shots for seniors. Seniors 50 and over. Sigh. Too shocking for words.
I’m 38, and we had one in my childhood home for years. Certainly long enough for me to be old enough to be dialing friends on the phone, which was probably at least age 9 or 10 when I started.
This really surprises me. My grandparents had their rotary phone in the late 80s/early 90s–I think they finally got rid of it in the mid 90s. My mom (their daughter) is 48 and grew up with a party line. Of course, this was in a rural area, and she also didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was 17, so maybe her experiences were abnormal.
I graduated in 1996 and have never owned a rotary phone. I only remember seeing them in hotels, with a lock on them.
I teach 7th Grade and these kids have never not had the internet at home. They will be in high school in 2 years, and have never not had a cell phone.
I remember seeing a rotary phone when I was a kid(around 1984) at the local YMCA and thinking it’s old. The lady had to show me how to use it.