“HI BEAUTIFUL!”

The grand entrance at Eastview mall, sundial in front, pleasure-dome at left.

—“If there’s one thing that makes me feel very old and stroke-addled its visiting the Apple-store in Eastview Mall.”
I said that to *****, a co-owner of the kennel that daycares my dog. I was returning to pick up my dog.
Eastview is bad enough. A gigantic shopping-mall, replete with pleasure-dome. It’s so big ya need a powered cart. Just getting to the Apple-store is a half-mile hike.
I saw geezers puzzling over a store-directory video. I did same my first visit. Push this, try that; scratch head. “The Apple-store is right over there!” a Good Samaritan said.
Constant-readers of this blog know Yrs Trly just bought an Apple iPhone 11Pro . 1,000 smackaroos.
“Is it worth that?” ***** asked.
“Yep,” I said. “All I do is look at it, it looks at me, and BAM, it unlocks. Can you say ‘facial recognition’?”
“No wonder it unlocks after looking at you,” ***** said.
“Oh, a smarty-pants, eh?” I said, reprising Moe of the Three Stooges.
Unlocking my i6 was two or three tries. Sloppy keyboarding is one of my minor stroke detriments. Plus whatever I mistyped is invisible.
That’s better than Microsoft. Mistype in Word®, and it might vaporize your entire document, off into Never-Never Land = start over.
I don’t know if “command-Z” works with Word®, but it saved my butt enough times in “Pages®,” Apple’s word-processor. (I’m doing this in “Pages®.”)
I’ve also used Apple’s “Time-Machine” to retrieve documents I somehow vaporized. Time-Machine backs up to an external hard-drive as I go along.
My question to Apple’s tech-mavens was why my e-mail seemed wonky. But was it really?
Tests by a bubbly techie indicated “Your phone is mirroring exactly what your cyberspace e-mail has.”
“Seemed my i6 got a lot more,” I countered.
Time for down-and-dirty = analysis for which the average geezer throws up his hands in despair.
No “inbox” beyond the two in my cyberspace e-mail, only two “sent” (the ones I never trashed), plus maybe 10 in “junk,” which I put there two weeks ago. —I hadn’t done anything pending my Apple-store visit.
“Usually it’s way more of each.” Think about it!
—A) The ones in “Junk” are inbox deletes from two weeks ago, and....
—B) I’ve gone to having this laptop on all day, to play Railstream’s Cresson webcam all day. That makes cyberspace e-mails go directly to this laptop only, and not my iPhone. No wonder my iPhone inbox has so few.
—C) I get occasional late-night e-mails when this laptop is off. Those appear in my iPhone inbox. I’m friends with a fellow Transit retiree who may be up at 3 a.m. (He, like me, also drove bus.)
“Okay, *****, send me an e-mail. I need to know if this thing will get it.”
“HI BEAUTIFUL,” she cranked.
We twiddled our thumbs as her e-mail bounced around cyberspace.
“Nothing yet,” I said. Then suddenly “GOT IT!”
A lot has changed since my wife died. “NO PRETTY GIRL WILL BE FRIENDS WITH YOU!” Yet now ***** is. —Among many others.
My overly-judgmental parents and holier-than-thou neighbor are skonked.

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. It slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)
• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke ended that. I retired on medical-disability. My friend is also a retired Regional Transit bus-driver.
• My “holier-than-thou neighbor” was Hilda Q. Walton, my Sunday-School Superintendent. She convinced me all men, including me at age-5, were SCUM. My parents heartily agreed. That marked-me-for-life. Only now, 70 years late, am I realizing they were WRONG!