teaching an old dog new tricks?

a few weeks back, i'm suddenly being bombarded with lots of phone calls from my bro, asking me questions about the old pc that i "dump" back home when i got my laptop. what's the ram? why is it so slow? do you still have the manual? can i delete all your files? it got me curious, because every time i go home, the old pc was just sitting there on the study table in the spare room, untouched, like how i first left it 2 years back. and brother has a pc and laptop of his own, surely he can't be interested in that old junk... so why the sudden interest in my pc?

i found out the answer when i made my monthly trip home to bear hill last weekend. apparently, my mom has started learning to use the computer, and is even taking classes in ms applications! wow... impressive. so bro has been summoned to set up my old pc at home for mom to "practice"...

anyway, during a particularly dull (and humid!) moment yesterday, where normally my parents would be taking their sunday nap in the 2nd hall, i discovered the rattan reclining chair to be empty! hmm... a short search brought me to the downstairs spare room, and that's where i saw mom, hard at work clicking away at the computer! so i walked in and asked what's she doing. "just revising", she said.

so i sorta just hung around, curious. after a while, she asked, "how to...". i knew this was coming! it seems that her class was learning how to create tables and columns and rows on ms word, so mom was just going thru the lessons... but she found that the table she's created doesn't have enough columns, and she's forgotten how to create more columns.

so i taught her the more "advanced" method of highlighting the columns and using right-click to add. but apparently, this is too advanced for her! "but teacher never teach us right-click!" whoops... and she seems to have some trouble controlling the mouse. in dad's word, "she doesn't know how to catch the lao-shu (mandarin for mouse)". hehe...

which got me thinking... can old dogs really learn new tricks? i mean, save for a few who's really tech savvy, the older generation are sorta wired differently. we can teach a 5 year old kid (or even younger!) to use the computer and they can pick it up so fast, but try teaching a 60+ year old senior citizen who erstwhile had not had any experience with the computer... i was doing all i can from getting all frustrated and raising my voice, and trying to be REALLY patient in repeating the process step-by-step for the umpteenth time. at least mom's trying to advance and better herself, right? but i can only say one thing: i really salute the computer teacher who took on this task!