Did the guy explain why air order and watch order split apart in the first place? Because that part is what got me. A lot of older shows got aired out of order by the network, or the studio made filler episodes that got slotted in the middle to buy time, so the "official" order on paper is not the order the story was written in. Then you have prequels and side stories that came out years later, and people jam those into the middle of a first watch, which spoils stuff the original run kept hidden on purpose. So the napkin order that guy gave you probably was not just air dates, it was the order the story actually unfolds.

Tried it. Lasted two days.

Did you ever go back and check if the phones still worked after that? I had a thing like this with the old Chuck E Cheese on Route 13, not the phones but the animatronic stage, the curtain was stuck half open for years and every time we drove past I had to look. Then they tore the whole place down and I felt weirdly sad about it, like I lost a pet I never even liked. Dead payphones hit different though because they used to be where you called for a ride home when your plans fell apart, and now they just hang there waiting for a job that doesn't exist. That note about mom got me, someone wrote that as a joke or maybe not a joke and it outlived whoever made the call.