"Connect me, please!"
A Russian historical joke in a Drabble
The first phone in St. Petersburg, Russia rang on July 1, 1882. On July 26, the first city telephone station began operating, serving only 128 users. By 1901, it grew to 3,800 subscribers.
The station's female operators were called “young ladies.” They were to be agile, tall and unmarried, to prevent “unrelated thoughts and concerns leading to errors in connections.” Thus, the first truly female profession was created.
Around this time, the first "telephone joke" appeared:
“Young lady! Please, connect me to my wife.”
“What number?”
“Who do you think I am, a khan, with a harem of numbered wives?!”
About the Creator
Lana V Lynx
Avid reader and occasional writer of satire and short fiction. For my own sanity and security, I write under a pen name. My books: Moscow Calling - 2017 and President & Psychiatrist
@lanalynx.bsky.social
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Ditched - Index
This index is just for my subscribers. I finished and published this long story or short novella of 6,000 words recently. I tried to link all previous parts of the story in the next one, so if you went along you shouldn't have been lost. This index is just put everything in one place.
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Comments (7)
Bravo!
Hahahahahahahahhaa that was a good one! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hahaha! 😂😂😂 Nicely done 👍.
I have mind some people who might actually need those numbers! Cool joke for my morning!
😂😂😂 A harem! I worked at Illinois Bell Telephone at the ripe age of 17, with “old women” (to me) ages 34-45. One job I had when a bit older was called timing. The operators marksensed (pencil fill in like ballots) to mark the time of the call. We took the cards and “timed” them by glancing quickly and flipping into a bin for the time - like 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10, 20 etc. We competed to finish first. Then stacked cards in piles about3-4 feet high, and carried the stack to the mark sense IBM punch machine. The machine punched the cards, sorted them - and that worked a how they knew what to charge people for their phone calls and long distance were more. 😁
History lesson with a joke tossed in , does it get any better then that.
Ridiculously and so sweetly funny.