By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, finally settled next to Phyllis in their adjoining recliners, was seeking sympathy from her for what seemed to be an endless litany of humiliations from the tech world: his “smart” car had refused to start for unknown reasons, the car radio switched to heavy metal on its own as he tried to listen to important news, his computer suddenly denied him access to an app he had been using for years, his telephone refused to let him delete a message about his car warranty, and there was more.
Being a kind and sympathetic person, Phyllis was devoting her full attention to the keeper’s whining–nodding and then watching as the keeper attempted to remove his reading glasses from a shirt pocket. The glasses became inexplicably tangled with a pencil which resulted in a ridiculous wedged impasse in the keeper’s shirt pocket causing him to use bad words he had been using earlier in the day, and also causing Phyllis to burst into laughter, laughter that went on so long that the keeper could only join in, especially after Phyllis stopped long enough to say, “Poor baby!”
