Patience

I've never had my patience tried as I have here.  Watching someone who is using a mouse for the first time is a lot like watching baby horses on those Discovery Channel shows, all wobbly and out of control.  You say "Click the start menu, right there" and watch them slowly inch the mouse towards the bottom left of the screen with all the speed of a drugged-up worm, stopping every inch or so to make sure predators are not watching.  Once they finally arrive there, the big moment comes: the click.  Before the click can be successfully mastered they first have to practice not pushing all the buttons on the mouse at the same time.  They then have to learn not to hold the mouse button down as they drag.  So now they click, but instead of a simple click, they murder the left button on the mouse, smearing it's guts all over the mouse pad.  The result is random shortcuts that are created when you drag and drop from the start menu.  You start over yet again.  "Bring the mouse here.  Good!  Very good!", trying to maintain a positive and patient attitude.  Then you say "now click" and watch them shove all their weight onto the mouse. "No! Wait, remember, a click is just pushing this button, like this."  But it's like riding a bike for the first time, fingers seem to loose their dexterity and instructions seem moot.  You just have to do it again and again.  Once the click finally happens they've got to click yet again on the "All Programs" menu.  This produces another round of mouse button massacres and try-agains.  [cut]Finally, the "All Programs" menu is open, and the really hard part begins.  They have to move the mouse up the menu without going outside it (because it will then close).  Slow progression up, up, up.  Then they stumble and the mouse falls outside the "All Programs" menu, closing it.  They panic and start clicking away, creating a new folder on the desktop in the process.  After a few more trys, they manage to get the menu open and the mouse finally over the program that needs to be opened.  This is the tense part.  After all this work, everything comes down to this last action.  They know that if they make a mistake, they will have to do it all again.  It's here that the most frustrating mistakes happen; here is where they start to forget everything we went over just minutes ago.  Mouse buttons are smothered and smeared.  Icons are moved, duplicated and deleted.  A frenzy of desperate clicks results in making the desktop a bloody battlefield of scattered icons and relocated folders.  We start over, yet again.

Soon these novice computer users will master these basic skills, but until then every program that needs to be opened, every file that needs to be found is an arduous ordeal that sucks the very life from my veins and pleasure from my heart.  The only consolation I have is knowing that both life and pleasure will be returned ten-fold once they finally master these skills.[/cut]