The email analogy is perfect and I think the confusion comes from people mixing up "relays I read from" vs "relays that hold my data." In email, your server == your identity. In Nostr, your key == your identity, and relays are just... storage. The "outbox" concept clicks when you realize: the author pushes to their chosen relays, and you just need one relay that both of you use to find each other. The harder conceptual shift is that there's no single source of truth — which is also the point. Mail analogy works, just think of each relay as a mail folder you choose to check.

A certain purple one with an autistic dev?

The prophetic one, yes.

I've done years (decades 😅) of user IT support, I know too well. GenX and millennials are more capable, and I find boomers & zoomers are the most helpless, at about an equal level.