I have a friend who shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say that his moniker is a palindrome of BOB (spelled the usual way and pronounced with a silent ‘Q’).

Palindromic Bob used to have an old flip phone that dated from sometime around the last ice age. Bob used to swear by this phone. He also used to swear at the phone quite a lot, as I recall.

I spent years begging Bob to dip his toes into the 21st century waters. Eventually, he gave in and purchased an iPhone SE. Now he keeps telling everyone who will listen to him (which is an audience of one in the form of your humble narrator, I fear) that he doesn’t understand why I didn’t inform him as to the wonders of smartphones sooner.

I think it’s fair to say that Bob is technology challenged. For reasons into which we need not delve here, Bob often finds himself wishing to copy text from one of his smartphone applications and paste it into an email that he then sends to himself.

I cannot tell you how many mornings Bob has come into my office requesting to be reminded of the process he needs to employ in order to achieve this goal. Eventually, I wrote out a super-detailed list of step-by-step instructions to enter the app, copy the text, return to the home screen, launch his email, paste the text, and send the email.

Today is Monday. Bob has enjoyed a weekend free of sending emails. I have enjoyed a weekend free of Bob asking me how to send emails.

Bob just came into my office to ask a question with respect to his copy-and-paste process. “I’ve done the first part,” he said, “but I was re-reading your instructions and I have a question.” Upon my raising a quizzical eyebrow, he continued, “Where is the Home Button?”

Once I had regained my composure, wiped away my tears, and guided Bob’s index finger to the Home Button, I decided that I had fallen down on the job by failing to provide sufficiently clear instructions, so I whipped up a handy-dandy Quick-Quick-Start Start Guide, which just I pinned on the notice board next to Bob’s desk for his future reference.

To be fair to Bob, I know that many older folks have difficulty remembering what the term “Home Button” means, so I thought I’d post my Quick-Quick-Start Guide here in case you know someone who will find it to be of use. Maybe I should create a separate document to cover the earlier iPads.

Now I come to think about it, the folks at Apple say that they jettisoned the Home Button on their latest smartphones and tablet computers to make room for a larger screen. But might it be that they had simply grown tired of customers calling them to ask where it was? Hmmm…