My father is turning 90 this year. He got his first PC about 15 years ago. He did really well with DOS. Windows threw him for a loop. Not long he got his new Windows pc, he called me on the phone to ask for help in deleting a file. He had read an article how you have to keep your PC "cleaned up" or it would run out of space.

But he didn't create any actual files that he needed to delete. He didn't use his pc for spreadsheet or word processing or anything like that. He used his pc for email and to watch the stock market. He lives far away. He wouldn't accept the fact that he didn't need to know how to delete something, and he was insistant that I help him. So over the phone I told him that first we were going to create a file and then we were going to delete it.

It took 30 minutes for him to convince me that he really needed and wanted this information. It took me 1 and 1/2 hours of time to help him create the txt file in order to delete it. In the middle of that 1 1/2 hours of time I briefly thought about self inflicting a wound to take me out of my misery, covered the phone, and said to my spouse - "hide the knives". Finally, at the very moment I had him select the txt file and was in the middle of the sentence "ok, now - press the key on your keyboard that says delete", my dad said - well, I'm tired now and I'm going to go to sleep, bye. And hung up. Without ever deleting the file. :crying:

Now I only help him in person. Which means if he needs help faster, he has to unplug everything and take it to the shop where he bought it and then drag it back and hook it up again.