re: Is anybody else the help desk for their elderly parents technology confusion?

One of the worse things my Dad ever said to me; "I got your Mom the internet." Four hours and a bunch of soul searching later I had to go home.

Couldn't figure out why they weren't getting test emails until I found out the installer set up some bogus accts so he could go home. He asked my Dad if he received the text messages for verification. Repl; "I don't get texts", except he had about 50 text messages on his phone. When I looked at it. That took a while to determine.

My brother handles tech and banking issues for my mom. I handle real estate, landscaping, and automobiles. She built a new house a couple years back and think I am a landscape architect. Not sure where she came up with that one!

I know they keep the mobile carrier stores in business. My mom and grandfather before he passed were in the att store weekly. My grandfather passed away believing we were hiding a secret account that he needed to pay (scammers). Even went with him to the store once so they could confirm he was all paid and no other accounts were under his social. The amount of apps and services they would go through together was unbelievable. Don't even get me started on passwords. It really was puzzling because my grandfather was pretty tech savvy in his day. Computers and softwares. I concluded it's a mixture of boredom and losing your edge. Still tough to understand.

At 75 y/o, I have used both of my boys for tech help. Older son, 41, has more patience so tend to use him more. Younger son, 39. was helping my wife and was getting flustered, I told him he needed to slow down and remember 2 things...1-your mom's techno skills maxed out with microwave popcorn, and 2-she has carbon paper and still uses it. He got the message.

About 24 years back, my wife's mid 80-something widowed grandmother was very proud that she had gotten herself a computer, set it up, and had gotten online, all by herself. We went up for a Christmas visit and she asked me to check it over for her, it seemed to be acting up a bit.

So I go off to her little office room and it's up and running, just jiggle the mouse and the screensaver disappears and what do I see? An open retirement account page - impressive that she was accessing her financials online - with mid-six figures in the account. I closed that out promptly, figuring that was TMI for a relatively new grandson-in-law to know.

Hmmm, computer's a little sluggish, I'll run her Norton to clean up malware, and maybe try out that new Malwarebytes download too.........wait, OMG, she has NO antivirus or protection whatsoever on this Win2k machine!!!

I shut everything down immediately, I'm just about shaking from concern that someone will pirate those six figure retirement accounts, if they haven't already, and politely tell my Wife and her "Hon, I need to run to Best Buy, your Gram needs some things." No time to waste, it was already about 8 PM. Got directions from Gram and off I went, thinking "Oh $hit oh $hit oh $hit I hope I'm not too late" the whole way there and back.

Her husband, a real Texas Ranger, had started small investing back in the 1940's and '50's, and she had been a lifer at 3M who took all her retirement funds in 3M stock, which as everyone knows was one of the market darlings for 30 odd years. That one account was tip of the iceberg!

Got back, installed Norton offline, and spent a good 4 hours cleaning that PC to death with every tool I could find once I got done with the Norton suite. Thankfully, nothing had been seriously compromised, the viruses and malware were more of the annoyance variety, and we changed all her PWs. Man, that was close!

Now I'm old enough that I am starting to get frustrated easily and use online chat help more than I ever have before, so I can see my time is coming. I'm iOS on everything to stave that off as long as possible! Both kids are engineers, so they're gonna have to step it up!

Hey Junior.

Fix my computer and get off my lawn.

I can still rewrite my will.

My rule is when I'm at their house I will fix it. When I'm not at their house I won't fix it, because trying to explain simple tech things over the phone is absolutely insane.

Yeah, now you know how they feel when you little candy assed, punk, cornholen young'uns come back looking for someone to fix your damn car or change your oil cause you don't want to screw up your mani ped

No. I changed my phone number