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My grandmother, bless her 19th century heart, never got it about telephones.

When she would pick up the boring-black handset in her living room, she would furiously click the two black buttons that popped up. She said she was clicking to attract the attention of the operator.

“But, Grandma,” I would say, in my eight-year-old wisdom, “it’s all automatic. There’s no operator.”

“I just know an operator is listening,” she would say.

Believe it not, this was an improvement on her previous phone adventures. She had a party line.

Remember those? You would share one phone number with as many as 10 additional households. If Mrs. McGillicuddy was talking to her sister for hours, you were cooked.

No way to make or receive a call — unless you asked Mrs. M. to please call her sister back in 15 minutes. Efficient it wasn’t.

But my favorite Grandma telephone memory was the way she made long distance calls.

Those were rare — and slightly exotic — in the early 1950s. My grandmother — pretty rare and exotic herself — used to blow into the receiver “to clear the line.”

No amount of giggling by her grandson would deter her. She was sure that dust lay in the path of her call. So, she would huff and she would puff. None of it made a bit of difference, of course.

Today, our telephones are dust-free, party line-free digital marvels.

In an airport the other day, my next-seat neighbor in the departure lounge whipped his cellphone out of his shirt pocket and dialed Qatar — bip, bop, boom, just like that. The call went through in less than eight seconds.

Now, we can forward calls, get messages, put calls on speaker, store a caller’s name and number with a couple of clicks. In a pinch, our phones could probably even shine our shoes.

It has all become routine to so many of us. But it makes me go “ooooh” just the same.

Because I remember when pay phones demanded a fresh quarter every five minutes or so.

I remember when there was only one phone company — and her name was Ma Bell.

I remember when there was no such thing as voicemail — and I would have to dictate my call-back number to an actual human, digit by painstaking digit.

I remember when the Princess phone was introduced, in all its cutesy glory. My high school girlfriend talked her parents into buying her a Princess, in shocking pink. She would wipe it down with cleaning fluid every night, as if it were a jewel.

I remember when wall-mounted rotary dial phones were introduced. I got one, in pea soup green. My college girlfriend pronounced the color “weird.” The phone lasted longer than she did.

I remember when an enterprising buddy in my college dorm figured out how to cheat the 1940s-era pay phone at the end of the hall. He would unscrew the mouthpiece and touch one end of a compass to the innards. Then he’d touch the other end to anything else metal. Presto! Dial tone!

And I remember calling my mother in the early 1960s. She lived in East Africa. To call her was something right out of an Abbott and Costello routine.

It was impossible to dial her directly. The call had to go through an operator in London, who would relay my voice via short-wave radio all the way to Nairobi.

The radio signal took several seconds to reach her — and her reply took several seconds to reach me. Not only did this hugely increase the duration and cost of the call, but it led to the most fractured phone conversations I’ve ever had.

Me: “Happy birthday, Mother!” (wait ten seconds — hear the London relay repeating what you had just said — wait ten more seconds).

She: “Thank you, Bob!” (which I would hear twice — once when it landed in London, then once more when it was relayed feebly to the U.S.).

A bit prehistoric, wouldn’t you say? But worth recounting to the younger generation, whose eyes get very wide. (Radio relay? Really?)

I have to admit that I am my grandmother’s grandson. I find text messaging awkward. I redial all ten digits of a phone number rather than push REDIAL. I feel uncomfortable when I push 6 to speak to a service rep (why can’t that rep just answer my call in the first place?).

But I have never blown imaginary dust out of my receiver, and I never will. With a bow to my Grandma, that’s progress.

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.