My grandfather owned a business, which meant he made and received a lot of phonecalls. I have no memory of him, as he died two months after I was born (on Halloween, in fact.)

However, my mother told me that he was also a diabetic and, for it, took medication that was a diuretic. That meant, in her words, that every morning he would take his medicine then “go pee for an hour and a half.” (I’m very ignorant of medicine so I can only parrot what she told me.)

The combination of these facts apparently resulted in him doing a lot of business (of both kinds) over the phone from atop the commode. He had a phone jack installed next to the toilet and got a phone specifically keep there.

The phone was the same model as the one pictured in this post.

Bonus fun fact: it was long ago that the jack looked like this.

Vintage phone jack

The only reason I know the story outlined above is that I, as a kid, did not know what that jack was and asked my mother about it.