Jim's admirers
My first beautiful baby grew up to be a mighty handsome man, and when he was in Junior High School, the girls began to notice. Actually they did more than notice, they began to call, and call, and call, and call..... This was before cell phones, and before phones in every room. It's hard to believe, but we had one phone, in the living room. The phone calls rapidly became more numerous, until every time we wanted to make call, we had to nag Jim to get off the phone, and retrieve the phone from where the cord snaked under his bedroom door. We received no phone calls, since the line was always busy. In a stroke of genius (we thought) we got Jim his own phone to free up the family line. This worked for perhaps two days of blessed quiet on our line, until we began getting calls on "our" phone....."would you take a message for Jim" the plaintive young voice would say...."his line is busy". Finally we got completely hard hearted, and refused to even take messages on our phone, telling the sad, sweet girls "you will have to call him on his line" "But his line is always busy" "I know, but just keep trying" "Can't you tell him Jennifer (or Julie, or April, or Amber or...) is trying to reach him and give him my phone number". "No, I'm sorry, you will have to call him on his phone" "click"