My dear wife gave me the newest version of iPad for Christmas, a most generous act on her part considering that (a) almost every time she saw me with my old one, she shook her head and lamented, “Are you playing with that thing again?” and (b) it cost more than my first car, a used 1940 Ford.

I left it in the box for a month, awaiting a visit from my stepson, Dave, and his wife, Linda. Dave is an architect in Wisconsin, and he’s probably 25 times more likely to get things to work than I am. Make that 50 times. And even then, it took a whole afternoon - partly, I suppose because he’s in his early 60s, not 13.

Mostly I use my tablet to do a couple of simple things: (1) send and receive email and (2) put together this column every week. The iPad, being smarter than any of us, laughs at this human inferiority, and persists in trying to make things as complex as it possibly can. When it’s dealing with a hopeless codger like me, it can get downright haughty.

The first thing I noticed in the mailbox was that there was no longer a category labeled Spam. I liked Spam on my antique iPad (circa 2012). Truth be told, I even liked the luncheon meat by that name made by the Hormel folks. (I once wrote them a letter complaining that when you used their little key to open the can, it cut right through the recipe on the side. A company spokesperson replied that the process was “relatively simple,” implying l must be some kind of dunce, which, of course, l am.)

I also loved the idea that I had a well-defined place to consign my unwanted junk mail. I often hit the Spam option with real gusto, happy it had a ready place in Internet hell, perhaps even whistling as I dispatched it. Why is it gone? Did the meat people write the computer people a little letter too?

OK, but I also noticed that while Spam was spammed by my new tablet, there were two new wastebaskets. One is called Trash, and the other is Junk. So now, I have a new issue: Pray tell, what’s the difference? I have enough trouble now distinguishing my household garbage from the rubbish. Now, I have to stop and ponder whether some piece of email is Trash or Junk. What’s the penalty for mislabeling - a stern note from Apple?

The more I think about it, why must we settle for just Trash and Junk? Suppose you get one of those emails from some distinguished correspondent in Nigeria, offering to send you the million bucks just bequeathed by an obscure relative. Trash or Junk don’t cut it. Can’t we have a Poppycock mailbox?

It would be fun to consign an email about getting rid of teen-age pimples to the Twaddle box. The latest correspondence promoting your congressperson could find a nice home in Balderdash or even Piffle, Blather or Flapdoodle. An alert about a sex predator in your neighborhood that turns out to be a blatant commercial for a new hair tonic might rest comfortably in Hooey, Claptrap, Drivel or Bunkum.

Think up your own destinations for all this stuff. You might as well get some fun out of it. And there’s sure to be plenty to go around.