Please don't phone me

We are having a phone problem--as in can't find one in the whole house that works. I'm finding myself running across the house to answer the only reliable one left--the old rotary pay phone. The previous owners left it as it was, installed on the family room wall. (It was a collector's piece; our house isn't that old.)

In the meantime our cell phones die, our answering machines go glitchy and the handheld phones get lost or thrown in anger. I get so tired of keeping up with the gadgets and the batteries. But, I may get more tired of the up and down of running to answer the one or two phones that work.

I searched the house for any working phones to bring into the
central area of the house, the kitchen. One bedroom has an attached wall phone. Another has a (what's the part called that you hold in your hand? I'm sure the term escapes me because it is on it's way to becoming extinct and everyone justs hands it to you and says, "here's the phone", so I forget what you call it-- the handset?) that lets you hear but not speak. The kitchen phone is DOA and things are loose and tumbling around in the (handset thing again), slammed down one time too many. I dug up an old novelty from the boy's room's upstairs--a little red sports car.
It works best of all of them.