Passwords And Systems, And The Way Of Life

Some days are living hell, and you know you were not meant for the times in which you are living.  A trip to the Apple store where I bought another IPad and, completely by chance,  my husband and I got newer versions of the IPhone, set up two days of such torture that I am not yet recovered, although at the same time, trying desperately to realize that from the perspective of the gods (for whom we are but sport, right?) it was my experience that was all too comic.  My first act of utter pride was to insist to our genial salesperson who had quickly enabled the IPad and handed it to me, that I knew perfectly well how to use it.  As a matter of fact, I had bought one in 2012, took several "lessons" from the Apple people, but never figured out what I needed it for, and eventually handed it on to my daughter. I was now in the market for another only because I was infatuated with the ease with which a recent visitor had been able to field all the questions during our cozy hours together sitting deep into the pillows on the living room sofa simply by glancing into the Google site on her IPad and typing in all the questions and reading the answers.  So easy, so much better than jumping up all the time and rushing over into my study to Google on the computer.  The problem of using it only developed later--I mean Google and Youtube were not the least as they are on my big computer; but it was setting up the cellphone that almost destroyed me.  It required I cannot recall how many separate steps, each with a different password, all of which I had to recall from my brain, since I had not come prepared with my typed out list, more valuable to me than my passport, and indeed kept in the same "safe place."  Miracle of miracles, although with many a false step and tortured efforts of recall I got all of them right and the cellphone was up and running.  My shirt was drenched with sweat, somehow the agony of it all, the constant terror of memory failing me in the midst of the fog of misunderstanding--I mean who knew what all those strange terms and nicknames were referring to?--left me defeated even in my triumph, as we sent successful test emails from the store. Successful because we were using the store's Wi-FY, but as I was to discover only days later, I gave one wrong identifying number of the access to the WI-FY in our home so that when I tried to send more emails from home the cellphone's screen lit up with the notice "Does not Recognize Network" or words to that effect, it's all a nightmare jumble in my memory.  So I called Comcast and a genial man proceeded to "talk me through," as they say in the business.  But at least half the screens I brought up at his direction turned out not to have the boxes, or the buttons, or the numbers, or whatever else he was directing me to, and he was left to offer such gems as "I guess they've done an upgrade," or "you need an upgrade," or "these things are so much easier in Microsoft."  After an hour of wandering under his direction from one screen to another, I said "Enough! I'll go back to Apple." "Good luck!" he replied, "they invented this email system but they're not too good at understanding what to do."  Next day back at the Apple store, standing at the Genius Bar, my genial genius was too kind and understanding, and we went through all the passwords, for which this time I  had the list, but in the end, the fog of confusion had not lifted.  He recommended going home trying the cellphone near the modem, plugging and unplugging the modem, telling my cellphone to "forget" the WI-FY system and then re-enter it.  I was close to tears.  Once home I realized that I had not remembered the crucial words "Does Not Recognize Network" and so quickly called a number that the fellow had just given me.  A new and busy voice answered to say  that the man I was supposed to talk with was "not on the floor," but that he would be happy to help.  He began a series or rapid fire questions, and each time I had to ask him to repeat, I grew vaguer and fainter, and more and more minimal, and I knew that we were enacting one of those terrifying scenes of interrogation in old black and white Nazi era films and I was sitting under the naked bulb, and growing more and more confused.  At which point I said in almost a whisper "never mind, I can't take it, I can't talk anymore, I don't care about the emails, I have to hang  up," and left him sputtering into the phone.  As I was about to lay my head down on the desk my husband picked up the phone and proceeded to toy with it.  "Look here," he said, "I think you told them the wrong identifying number to begin with.  You said you were going to use your old telephone number from when you  lived in Rome."  And so I had, and so I did, and so thereafter we lived happily ever after and the mail system works.  But why didn't the problem of that wrong number ever surface during the two days of nightmare and torture?