Technology and the Elderly Parent

On Father’s Day, my Dad asked me to help with his printer. The previous time I visited, his printer had run out of ink and he inquired as to what he needed to do in order to rectify the situation. Knowing that he is technologically challenged AND he likes to handle things in person, I advised him to remove the ink cartridge and take it to the store and find the replacement.

He accomplished the task and was also able to replace the ink cartridge to its rightful place. Unfortunately, the printer still would not print. I took the cartridges out and remove the protective film from the cartridge, clicked it into place and away went the printer. 234 documents in queue to print. That is the number of times my Dad hit the printing icon after replacing the cartridge. I guess he thought he wasn’t clicking the mouse hard enough.

I went in and cancelled the print jobs. He was ecstatic. He asked me how I did that and then began the mini lecture on how to cancel the print job and print a test page after changing the ink cartridge. Six and a half hand written pages of notes later, Dad was satisfied that he could manage this the next time.

Of course it is worth mentioning that the first time my parents tried to leave their out going message on their answering machine, it went something like this:

Dad: (Beep) Ok, the machine is blinking, what…wait…turn to the page in the manual so I can see if (Beep)

This was the outgoing message until I was asked to change it without witnesses. He doesn’t like to admit to the whole family that he can’t do everything. Maybe I am the only daughter that won’t throw it up in his face at a later date.