His name is Cole and may his shadow never decrease.

I got this new phone, see? An iPhone, which every single person in the universe told me to buy unless I was talking to someone who has an Android phone. I have none, zero, zilch, idea what an Android phone is and I owned one until a week ago. So anyway, hours of angst spent with Mike-from-customer-service (all one word) getting my phone number transferred were followed by more hours of angst until someone explained the little lever on the left side of the phone turns the sounds on and off. You can play with the volume all you want but if it’s muted, it’s good and muted. Once that minor hurdle was cleared, it was time to groove in the wonderful world of unlimited talk and unlimited text. This, of course, was also after the drama of getting my contacts transferred, you understand. For one horrible spell I believed the guy when he said you could not transfer a contact list from an Android to an iPhone. It turns out you can (small mercies) and through some medium level techno-shenanigans on his part and medium level beseeching on mine, we got it done. But, really, can’t we all just get along?

Unbeknownst to me, and everything about this phone is unbeknownst to me, there is texting and there is iMessaging and there is stuff that goes through the Cloud. Here is what I was told about the Cloud. “Store your information here. You can get it back. We promise.” This is exactly — exactly — what those people said about the floppy disk, too. Have you tried to retrieve anything off a floppy disk recently? You might as well try playing a Beta tape.

So life was good for three days at which time Steve announced he was getting messages on his iPad that people were sending me. This was way, way too much sharing. This was also way, way too much technology for me to deal with. What do we do when we are over-whelmed with technology? Well, if there is not a 10-year-old handy, we get to the nearest Apple Store and we get there just as quickly as we possibly can.

The Apple Store is where I met Cole. When you walk into an Apple Store, the aura of technology hits you almost physically in the face. Sort of like the wall of testosterone that assaults you when you walk into the weight room at the gym. (My apologies to the women weight lifters. By and large they smell a lot better than the male weight lifters.) The technology fog at the Apple Store was so thick and unrelenting it made me giddy. It was while I was grinning stupidly under the influence that Cole approached me with the immortal words, “You look like trouble.” “Wow,” I replied. “You really are a genius.”

Before he touched my troubled bundle of electronics, Cole wanted proof it really was my phone. This proof, incredibly enough, was on a piece of paper—-paper, I tell you—-that I, even more incredibly enough, had brought with me. Then Mr. Genius linked my phone to a computer and started punching keys and buttons so fast his fingers were a blur. Every once in a while he would pause long enough to ask me a question about IDs and passwords and pass-codes. For all I knew he was programming my phone to launch ICBMs.

Understandably I was a little nervous about this. Maybe a lot nervous. It had taken a very long time to get the phone to this barely-functioning state and I wasn’t sure at all I could endure any back-sliding. I did not want to be so bold as to come out and ask a genius if he knew what he was doing. But, being a genius, Cole perceived the unspoken question. With all the wisdom and compassion accrued in his 19 years, he turned to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Trust me.” “Trust me” are usually the last two words you hear before the contents of your wallet disappear.

Happily, the contents of my wallet remained intact but the offending messages went somewhere else. They will probably turn up on a floppy disk.