Hi Lee and Robert,

I think it is because all their lives they have been useful, and felt that
they were able to help or manage or do anything they wanted, and looked
after us.   It has to be VERY hard to accept that now we are looking after
them, rather than the other way around.

Thanks Mare.  I do that sometimes -- like, with the air conditioner, I
responded to his offer to walk down the stairs ahead of me by suggesting he
get the front cover of the a/c instead.

We have a big challenge coming up, though: Dad's computer crashed and he had
to get a new one.  Now, my father was a computer systems analyst and
programmer for many years, even wrote a lot of his own programs, but
switching to yet another operating system (Windows XP, from Windows 98) is,
I'm afraid, beyond him now.  I don't want him to give up on computers,
because it's one thing that keeps him happily occupied, scanning in photos
of birds from nature magazines, even making a video slideshow presentation
at Christmas to give out to friends and neighbors (the last couple of years,
some slides and his voiceover gets repeated, and it rambles, but it makes
him happy).

But he wants me to explain some of the things work, and I'm seeing a bit of
the techno-phobia I've seen in other people, especially older people, who
aren't familiar with computers -- a panicky 'O my God, it's different, I
don't know how to do this what if I make a mistake?!!!' attitude.  And with
that fear, he even gets fuddled about things like opening a file when
they're exactly the same as the old Windows he's familiar with...

'Ok, now go to File, Open....'
<he scans the screen, looking for it, moves the mouse around several places>
'On the Menu Bar, there at the top...
'The bar above that.... File, farthest to the left....
'Right, File, no click on that, and click Open...'

... this might take a full minute, to get that one step.  I try correcting
him positively - 'yes, the one there, that's right' -- but it's a situation
where, if I don't stop him and he makes a mistake, the mistake is as likely
to register in his mind as 'the way to do it' and he's apt to get lost and
frustrated, while if I correct him over and over, no matter how gently I put
it, he gets the idea and gets angry at me.  My solution so far has been to
limit any teaching I give him to maybe five minutes at a time - for both our
sakes.

If he doesn't get the hang of it to some degree, I may eventually suggest we
trade computers, since I still have Windows 98 on mine and he could use it.
But to have him give up on using computers, when it's been a major focus of
his life for about forty-two years, would be a huge blow to him.