The human life can be neatly divided into two halves. In the first half, when the phone rings, you think, "Oh, great!  Someone's calling me!" In the second half, when the phone rings, you think, "Oh.  Great.  Someone's calling me." In olden times, of course, when the phone rang, it really rang.  It wasn't just a twenty-second snippet of some Lady Gaga song.  And the phone was a shared object –  it could be for anyone, so when someone answered it, there was this delicious sense of mystery: who's calling?  Who's it for?