I have a strange story for you.

[LuckyCharms]

I was 12 years old. Soon to be 13.

My older sister's friend said to her one day..."You know, your brother Lucky is a really nice boy, but why do I see him in every phone booth in town"?

Back then, the phone system had some kind of glitch. This glitch became known as the "Hot Line". I have no idea who discovered this, but here is how it worked...

Find a phone booth. Go in and drop a dime to make a call.

Dial the number "2".

You would then get a recording that said "I'm sorry, the number you have reached is not in service" (I still have that message as an earworm because I heard it literally thousands of times).

The recording would play continuously, but there was about a 10 second period of silence in between each of the repeated recordings.

During that silent period, if you were a guy, you would yell into the phone (you had to yell to be heard) ANY GIRLS? or, if you were a girl, you would yell out "ANY GUYS".

If there were any girls in some other phone booth doing the same thing that you were, they would yell out the phone number of the phone booth they were in.

So, if I yelled ANY GIRLS into the phone, and someone yelled out their phone number, I would call them and arrange to meet.

This is how I met a girl that I dated from age 12 to age 20. We almost got married for fuck's sake! We met, fell in love, and dated for that long period. At age 12! My mother loved her, and her parents treated me like their son.

Can you imagine? 12 years old? Riding your bike to a phone booth with a hand full of dimes?

ANY GIRLLLLSSSSSS?

The phone company finally figured out and fixed this glitch, because things got way out of hand. There would be 20 to 30 kids at every phone booth. But I got in before it got popular.