It's easy to be dismissive until it happens to you. A friend was playing with her sister's kid and went "brrring! brrring!" to imitate a telephone call. The kid put her hand up to her ear, completely flat, and said "Hello?"

(The old way to play telephone is to answer it by putting your pinkie to your mouth and your thumb to your ear. But of course, phones haven't been shaped like that in a long time.)