For our younger readers, what he was holding as a portable phone that connected to the house. They had actual raised buttons and no screen and the buttons made a different tones when pressed.
Shared this with ChatGPT asking to explain the joke:
The cartoon features two characters sitting at a table. One is dressed as Superman, and the other is a woman wearing a bonnet and a dress with a large “A” on her chest. The caption reads, “It’s not what you think.”
The joke lies in the humorous misunderstanding of the “A” symbol. The woman represents Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter,” in which she is forced to wear the letter “A” (for “adultery”) as punishment. The humor comes from the juxtaposition of this character with Superman, leading to a funny misinterpretation of the “A” symbol. In this context, the “A” could humorously be mistaken for “A” in a superhero sense, like “A for Awesome” or another positive attribute, rather than its original meaning. The phrase “It’s not what you think” emphasizes this mix-up.
For our younger readers, what he was holding as a portable phone that connected to the house. They had actual raised buttons and no screen and the buttons made a different tones when pressed.
Ugh… Just google it.