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Phrase: Ring off the hook
Raise your hand if you can remember rotary dial telephones!
Look, kids!
See all the dinosaurs with their hands in the air!
I’m just joking. I remember rotary dial phones, too.
When I was just a kid in single digits, we only had one telephone hanging on the kitchen wall with a super long cord.
I remember my mom baking bread while talking on the phone with the receiver balanced between her shoulder and the side of her head.
We all had to duck every time we walked through so the cord wouldn’t accidentally choke us.
That reminds me of freshly baked bread with butter and molasses.
Those were the days!
Anyways, that phone would ring off the hook every evening once my father got home from work.
He was a sheet metal worker, and there was always someone who wanted a gas tank or a set of rocker panels made for their car or a furnace installed in their house.
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Someone always needed something, and as long as they were willing to supply the beer, my father was ready to make it for them.
That was life in outport Newfoundland.
Ring, ring went the phone every evening from about 7:00 pm until midnight.
My dad was a well-known, popular guy in our small town of less than 2,500.
When there are many incoming calls, we can say the phone is ringing off the hook.
Come to think of it, this is probably why I’m not too fond of the telephone.
To this day, I will never answer the phone, and I never use my smartphone for voice calls, either.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 76.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
