Is there anyone out there who still has a landline telephone? We do. We cling to our dinosaur phone like it’s a family heirloom, despite the fact that no one ever calls it—except for telemarketers, scammers, or robots pretending to care deeply about our Medicare benefits. Our friends laugh at us and shake their heads.

“You still have a landline?” they ask, in the same tone one might use to ask if we churn our own butter.

For years, Hubby and I have discussed getting rid of the landline because it seems silly to pay for a phone that exists solely to interrupt our meals and naps. In fact, we revisited the discussion this very morning when a robocall woke us up to inform us—again—that we might have unclaimed Medicare benefits. I hung up. An hour later, during breakfast, the phone rang again with the same message.

(For the record: Medicare does NOT call people. Ever. Anything Medicare needs to tell us old fogies arrives via the U.S. mail, in an envelope heavy enough to cause emotional distress.)

By mid-morning, after several robocalls, I was fully prepared to hurl the landline out the nearest window. Especially after I had settled into my recliner with a blanket and a book—clearly signaling to the universe that I was unavailable. The landline rang. I ignored it. A minute later, it rang again. I ignored it again, reasoning that anyone who truly needed me could call my cell phone like a normal 21st-century human.

When it rang a third time, I launched myself out of the chair, grabbed the receiver, and barked, “Hello!”—fully prepared to deliver a righteous tongue-lashing, assuming the caller was a human and not an AI with feelings.

“What’s wrong with the phones?” came an angry, unrecognizable voice.

Assuming this was another telemarketer with a unique pitch, I snapped, “Who is this?”

“It’s Older Son!” he yelled. “Something’s wrong with my phone! I can’t make calls, send texts, or receive messages. I can’t reach you or Dad on your cell phones. I’m calling from a friend’s phone!”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I just talked to Younger Son on my cell phone. You probably need to take your phone to the Verizon store and have them check it.”

Older Son, who becomes slightly hysterical when technology—or anything else that doesn’t go the way he thinks it should—betrays him, escalated quickly. “You have all the paperwork for the account! I can’t do this! You’ll have to do it!”

Knowing logic was no longer invited to the conversation, I promised to have his father look into it when he got home. Which I did.

Hubby pulled out his phone to call Older Son, frowned, and said, “Hmm. There’s a network problem. I can’t make calls. Check your phone.”

“Oh,” I said, checking mine. “Same message.”

Turns out the entire Verizon network was down—something that had never happened to us in all our years with them.

So, we did what any modern, technologically advanced household would do.

We called Older Son back on the landline.

Afterward, I looked at Hubby and said, “Isn’t it interesting how this happened right before we got rid of the landline?”

It was clearly a warning. The moment we cancel the landline, the grid will go down, cell towers will fail, and the only working phone in America will be the one we almost threw out the window.