Huh. Well, it was a feature that my parents paid the telco for, so I don't know how it worked, but it was exactly what it says on the tin: an 800 telephone number that I could use from any phone and call my house phone.

Pagers were mostly a thing that dealers had so you could buy drugs. My mom got me one because I was always out driving around - sometimes up to 2 hours away on a whim - and she wanted to be able to check on me. We didn't have a cell phone, so this was the solution for her.