Actually, I’m coming around to your point of view. I think it was the recipient who controlled the “transaction”.
The world was so very different. Waiting for that 0 to finally work its way around the dial, good grief. Especially since as a kid I was perpetually afraid any phone number that included a 0 might lead me to somehow get connected to a phone operator, so I wanted to dial the following number as quickly as possible.
One of the things that radio hosts here joke about is how kids with a zero in their phone number had fewer friends. “Oh, I don’t want to call Bobby, he’s got two zeroes in his phone number, it takes so long to dial”. Between that and risking talking to An Adult and getting In Trouble, I wonder how true that is.
The world was so very different. Waiting for that 0 to finally work its way around the dial, good grief. Especially since as a kid I was perpetually afraid any phone number that included a 0 might lead me to somehow get connected to a phone operator, so I wanted to dial the following number as quickly as possible.