Question about old telephones (late 70's - early 80's)
You may have subconsciously heard a faint noise in the phone, caused by voltage changing on the line as the incoming call was switched in at the exchange. 

Back in those days telephones exchanges were all electromechanical, with banks of switches driven by electromagnets and controlled by relays (thousands of them!). The Strowger exchanges that I worked on used a DC motor-generator to produce the 25Hz ringing voltage, with cams that created a cycle of 1 second on and 2 seconds off. This fixed ringing cadence was distributed to all the final selectors in the exchange.         

The ringers in those old phones typically had two bells, with a striker operated by biased electromagnets moving a rocker arm. AC ringing would cause the rocker to toggle so the striker would hit first one bell and then the other. Though the ringer was designed to respond only to the 120V AC ringing, the change in DC line voltage when an incoming call came in could cause the rocker to move slightly and make a faint clicking sound. Depending on where the ringing cycle was at the time, this could give a person with sensitive ears up to 2 seconds of 'advance warning' that the phone was about ring.