HIGH-TECH PAIN IN MY PALM

CONGRATULATIONS," my friend Lisa said to me as my handbag began to ring, "you graduated from a cell to a PDA."

"A what?"
"A PDA."
"What's a PDA?"
"It's what you're now using."
"I'm using a Palm Treo."
"What's a Palm Treo?"
"A sort of phone, computer, e-mail, Blackberry, text-messaging kind of thing. It comes in different colors. This pretty orange one, same one I saw Zach Braff getting, was a gift."
"Let me educate you. It's what's called a PDA."
"What exactly is a PDA?"
"I don't know. I only know that's what it is."
Googling PDA, Lisa determined it stands for Personal Digital Assistant - whateverthehell that is.
I don't understand technologicalese. What I understand is I'm losing my mind. I want only to answer the phone when it rings.
So the company dispatched a techie to teach me. Erin's first lesson was: "To deactivate an open application, like, say, if you've downloaded music from the Web to use as your ringtone, press Purge with the stylus."

Do what with the what?
"And you have to install your old SIM card unless your numbers were directly on the hard drive. Where did you store your contacts?"
My what?
"Look, to bypass the telephone book and go into speed-dial mode, just click on the home page by hitting the 'house' button then highlight the star icon which automatically brings up your prefs."
SIM card? What's a SIM card?
"Decide on wallpaper and it will default to that each time your phone comes out of sleep mode but remember it self-locks after a few seconds and you have to press the center button to unlock it. Understand, this phone never goes off. It's always on."
What's a SIM card?
"You can also snap a picture, stream a video, record a tune, make an audible memo, set an alarm clock, have a date book, use a calendar . . ."