You know.,. Old people really....

The only time I ever had those shinnanigins was when my mum & dad couldn't log into their new Tesco account. Otherwise they are pretty cool.

reply to post by Hefficide

My husband and I took care of my Grandmother during the last ten years of her life. I would not trade that time for anything in the world. She was in no way like you describe your Mom, so I feel for you. When we finally has to put her in a nursing home I went to visit and care for her every day. My children were young and received the benefit of another adult with unconditional love to spend time with them every day. While she was in the nursing home I took the kids with me on most days, and many other residents lavished attention and love on them as well as my Granny.

When Granny lay dying I climbed into the bed beside her, and she passed peacefully with my arms around her as I described my last camping trip where we had stumbled into a herd of deer in the National Forest. Granny loved "communing with nature" as she always called it.

Maybe your Mom isn't what you would call an Angel, but try your best to overlook the annoying things and focus on the good- even if it's just old memories. One day she will be gone, and I promise you will miss even those things that aggravate the tar out of you now. You will look back and chuckle about how feisty she was, and how you wish you had been more patient.

I cry even as I type this. I would give anything for even a few more hours with Granny. Make the most and the best of the time you have left with your mother. You will never regret it.

Heff, try to remember what she went through with you, when SHE was 48. Yep. Payback is hell!

Be patient and just love her. That's all she really wants.

You know "youngster" there are ways to access a computer remotely for support so you don't have to drive over to fix it. I use this technique to fix my step kids computers (they are technically idiots).. Us old guys didn't build the intent just so you kids could look at porn - it has useful applications too.

reply to post by Hefficide


Oh my god how I can relate! Even though my situation's a bit different - got my Mom-in-law, Dad-in-law, and handicapped Sis-in-law living in my house! Spend most of my time besides work taking them to like zillions of medical appointments, cooking for them, cleaning up after them, and the tech support part is so frustrating!! They're not evil, but they're all very very hard of hearing, even with very expensive hearing aids. My sis-in-law is actually the easiest - even though she's a like a giant four-year-old! My father in law can't hear or learn squat and messes up any computer, coffee pot, anything! The craziness never ceases!

Then my Mom, like 1 1/2 hours away, wants to learn how to use a computer now - she's gonna be just like your Mom with that (but less evil.)

Yup, family will totally drive you crazy- precisely because you don't want to abandon them even though they can be so bad - sometimes ya just gotta rant about it and let off some steam. And drink a bit.

Im older, in the 40's.. so my mom is old. My grandmother is ancient. Now, my mom isnt so bad.. mildly irritating and the reason I move far far away. When she mentioned going back to the rez when my dad died.. I was like YESSSS!!! My grandmother is another story. Heff... ive never felt actually homicidal about anyone in my entire life.. except when dealing with her. Now I know why my grandpa would "lose" his hearing aids. Seriously. SHe is about 4'11". Grandpa was about 6'5"... he was in fear of her. Now that she is older, she has shrunk to about 4'8" and is a little brown raisin TERROR. I had her over here for a week.. insane according to my cousins.. and I was rolling her hair. Now she is ancient and has probably 3 hairs on her head. She was quite beautiful and quite vain when younger. So anyway, Im rolling her hair and she is griping .. its not straight, its this, its that. I took a pic with my cell of the back of her evil little head and showed her that I was doing it right. She looked at the phone and then went on about they werent spaced out right.
Now.. whn youre old and at someones mercy.. does it make sense to annoy them into a homicidal frothing at the mouth rage??
On top of that she is a holy roller. Yep, God made it to the rez at some point and he was charismatic. Now Im going to hell about every 5 minutes.. aka every time I do something she doesnt like. I do believe the evil in her keeps her alive. SHe really does look like an old brown raisin. When I was doing her hair I was looking real hard and she asked me what I was doing.. I said I was looking for horns.

When she left I was ready for admitting myself for some demerol and clean sheets in a nice locked ward. I was STRESSED and think I developed an ulcer. She gives me diarrhea... no joke. I have to respect my elders and am not used to holding my tongue.. and she knows it. She pushed EVERY button I had I swear... on purpose. I am telling you it was a concentrated evil conspiracy with her to make me lose it.. so Id explode and disrespect her. JAYSUS I hope I dont get her when she becomes unable to care for herself. I told her I had a nice walk in closet Id shove her in and use a shock collar. SHe just looked at me with a sweet old lady smile and said.. you know God and grandpa hear you "Advantage"... and they judge you. I swear I thought I heard thunder crack and the lights flickered...

Have your Mom join some kind of forum that may interest her and do like I did--- learn from the young people.
Most of what I learned came from them.


I know how trying it can be to deal with the elderly. My Dad has passed away and Mom is in her late 80's. No matter how trying it can be, remember she won't always be here. You're doing a great job hun!

Oh Heff, I feel your pain. Only it's my 84 year old grandmother.
Just the other night, I was just getting my youngest settled into bed when I receive a frantic phone call about how her printer won't work. She gave me this story about how she called tech support, hung up on them twice, but they told her to unplug her mouse. I tried to make sense of what she was telling me over the phone to no avail.
Long story short, her internet wasn't working. I got her back online and I am still trying to figure out how that translated into her printer not working and why they would tell her to unplug her mouse. This was after I had to drag 3 kids out of the house at 9:30 at night.

Heffy.. I have another one.
I was sick as a dog on 9/11. I was still working the ER and contracted some funky kid fungus that laid me up in bed sick for a week. SO Im asleep and my mom calls.. screaming into the phone : TURN ON THE TV WE'VE BEEN BOOOOOOOOOOOMBED!!!!!
I practically levitated off of the bed and turned the TV on. I had to explain to her that it was a plane and not a russian missile. She is from the nuke scare days .....AKA get under your desk and stick your butt up in the air and youll be safe from a nuke... and was sure we'd been nuked into armageddon. The woman stayed absolutely glued to the TV for a week.. I dont even know if she went to the bathroom or ate. SHe would call me every hour or so with one of her "updates" on the tragedy.. and repeated the info all screwed up. Then she calls my husband... my dad had died recently.. and asked him if he would come over and put another deadbolt on her door in case a sleeper cell was in her city. We indulged her.. .like a deadbolt would save her from the spooky terrorists.

I sure hope my kids dont tell tales on me on message boards when Im old and insane....


Did I mention my dear beloved grandma is a dead eye shot with a comb? Ive been actually hit in the back of the head with a rattail comb whilst running away from her. You know.. out of yardstick range. Letme clarify here.. she used to braid my hair.. it was always down to my butt and its very coarse. I keep very short now for some psychological rebellion thing.. but she would braid it SO tight id cry and yell and scream. I swear it was so tight my eyes would water. You could see my red scalp through the braids.. and to see your scalp through hair as thick as mine.. well thats paranormal in itself. Id try to run.. when she started the hair snatching... and the mean ol thing had this red yardstick from the CoOp that if I was in range.. Id get a smack. I got out of range and she threw the comb. Its evil Im tellin ya. She'd say yell all ya want.. gonna make no difference and its gonna get done. I need therapy I think.
The Old Raisin is pretty darned scary. Ive asked her if she had put powdered sugar or arsenic on my fry bread. She is the only old woman I know that can not only read ancient greek.. but can tell you that if she put Thallium in the water supply she could kill off all of the people in town and have shorter lines at the grocery.. said it while standing in the line. I had to google Thallium. Im absolutely NOT joking.

They say that nature designed teenagers to be difficult so it is easier for parents to let them leave the nest.

I listened to a radio show whose son was going off to college who was the worst apathetic eye rolling teen, the parents started doing a countdown the number of days till he went off to school.

Anywhoo, I think that seniors are difficult for the same reason. Haven't met too many that aren't a royal pita. I think it is nature's design so they are easier to let go. And then the children feel guilty for feeling relieved.

AS for technology, when I helped take care of my husbands grandmother, she constantly would hit the tv off timer. So this tv kept randomly going off and she would get all upset and start yelling.

They gave her an alarm to wear that if she fell, she could push the button to let someone in the house know, it set off a loud buzzer all over the house, so they could come rescue her.

They had to take it away wehn she started using it to call people to get her stuff.

I ran an IT department for many years. In fact, I was there before we had computers, bought the first one, an Apple ][, automated the company with a mini-computer, and introduced a computer system to several hundred people. I retired with over 500 computers in the system. I was known as a computer guru in my field; it was just that I got there first and taught myself.

When we first did this, in 1984, many of the employees had never seen a keyboard. My sense is that age has little to do with computer aptitude.

* One lady had to have been near 80 years old. No real reason to work, she just loved the interaction with the customers. She took to the computer like a fish to water. She was so excited to be learning this new stuff. Every time I encountered her (She worked at a branch office) I came away smiling.

* One middle-aged man, about 40, attacked the keyboard with a vengance. He would WHACK the keys so hard the whole keyboard would shake. This guy was fluent in German, Greek, and Latin, had a Masters in Classics. But when it came to computers he was slow, obtuse, and really had no idea what he was doing.

* One young woman, about 24, could not learn to use a portable computer to save her life. Every day we had to re-teach her how to download the records (It was an inventory computer). It wasn't that she had attitude; she was very pleasant. It's just that when it came to computers, her IQ was about 40.

* My daughter, who is 41, simply cannot learn how to use a digital camera. The one I bought her has, I think, never been used. I really can't stand to be a passenger in a car she drives because she scares me so badly.

Now obviously I am well over 60, but my entire career was spent working with technology and teaching it to others. In my experience, age has little to do with it. As the examples show above, there are very old people who are tech whizzes, and young people who are complete dolts.

You don't see that from your perspective because you have only your "kid to parent" experience to draw upon. I'm not saying you don't have these experiences. You surely do! But perhaps you shuld refrain from generalizing.

I take care of my grandfather-in-law.

At first, I was pretty biased against him, because he always needed "help" with the most mundane stuff. Opening a bank account in his new home city, that sort of thing.

But I have come to respect him.

He lives in fear of Alzheimers, which every one of his friends his own age has already died of. And he says he can feel that he is slowly losing his memory and even his "self."

But I have also discovered "WHY" he wants me to be his companion at the bank, the DMV, or buying a new washing machine.

Salespeople and bureaucrats treat the elderly in a shameful way. I was shocked! They are far worse than patronizing; refusing to supply bank records when grampa spotted a mistake in his account--the clerk told him he was senile---to his face! Of course, grampa produces his own evidence of the mistake, and insists on showing his records to the manager, but the mgr tells him to "calm down" (grampa wasnt shouting, just insisting on being heard).

Doctors are the same way. I have started going with Grampa to his appointments, because Grampa said that the doctor refused to tell him what injections he was being given. The doc just kept saying, "something to make you feel better." When I came along, as grampa's "driver," the doctor tried to make me sit out in the hall, for his privacy. The doctor now talks to me, and acts like Grampa doesn't even speak English: "undress him and have him sit over there" literally like he is a two-year-old.

Add to that the way that criminals prey on the elderly, and you can see how their failing eyesight and hearing, compounded by mistreatment by authority figures can lead to them being paranoid and combative.

None of this excuses misbehavior, but maybe it explains the source of some of it.

My hubby say's the same thing about the elderly and driving. He firmly believes that there should be an age limitation on drivers licenses. Over 70, no more driving. LOL.

I use to take care of the elderly quite regularly before I moved on to pediatrics home care. I miss the stories.

reply to post by Hefficide


I feel your frustration my friend, I truly do. I take care of my mother as well...though her age isn't as advanced as your mother. She is however, in the throes of Huntington's Disease, which makes her very irritable, and sometimes violent. It's scary to watch a parent go through that. After all, they took care of us as children, it's hard to imagine them being, essentially, children themselves. With that being my point, I've found that it helps to remember all the times my mother took care of me, how proud she was when I graduated college, how ecstatically happy she was to hold her grandchildren for the first time. Those memories get me through the days where I just want to throw my hands up in the air and walk away, knowing that she never walked away from me.

In her twilight tears, my old granny (born 1905) needed no help of any kind from anyone.
As a great believer in equality, she would often kick male or female ageists in the crotch.
She loved a cup of hot chocolate with rum before she went to bed... with her personal trainer.
Even when she died at the ripe old age of 102, she buried herself with no difficulty.

I feel for you.

My father is not computer savvy either. It's a standing joke in my family that my father is so computer illiterate that he doesn't know where the power button is, that's why the computer is always on at work and never gets switched off.

I have an 86 year old grandmother. It took me 6 months to get her to use the DVD player my uncle installed for her. I tried to get her to use a laptop - lets just say the laptop sat on her table for a month covered with a cloth so it wouldn't get dusty.... and her excuse was that her wrist was damaged so she couldn't use the mouse. But somehow she managed to finish a tapestry with a damaged wrist??? Her cell phone, given to her for emergencies and to take shopping in-case her old car dies, is attached permanently to the wall socket on charge. No matter how much we try to teach her to use it, it's no use. If you phone her on the cell phone, instead of pressing the big button in the middle to answer it, she calls us on the land-line and asks if we called.

When we go shopping, she has to go into most of the shops and talk to all the owners. Telling them the same stories she told them last week, the week before and the week before that. It literally takes all day to get milk, bread, bananas, tissue salts and lunch.


What is even worse, is the 60-something neighbour. It took him 1h 20 minutes to get to the point and tell me his printer is out of ink (had to listen to his TV is broken, has to get new one, TV license is in his dead wife's name, he doesn't look like her in the ID book?? blah blah blah) and wanted a letter printed. Later that day, we get a phone call - he can't get photos off his camera. This would be the third time in 2 months - I wrote it down for him. The first time he couldn't find the camera cable and I spent 3 hours next door showing him how to transfer photos from camera to computer. Then he wanted photos off the cell phone onto the computer. Couldn't find the cable or software for that either. Spent another hour there waiting for software to download and listening him go on about son [why the hell doesn't he phone his kid when he has problems like this??] And apparently I am explaining this too fast - seriously?? - If I explained things any slower we would be in suspended animation mode.

This is only the electronic aspect of our nightmare neighbour. Lets just say I no longer answer the phone. If someone wants something they must send me an email.

I am willing to deal with my grandmother's tech illiteracy - she is my grandmother after all - but the neighbour is a pain in the rear end and pushing his luck. He must bother his own family for this sort of BS.

Originally posted by tovenar

>>>>>>>>>>

Salespeople and bureaucrats treat the elderly in a shameful way. I was shocked! They are far worse than patronizing; refusing to supply bank records when grampa spotted a mistake in his account--the clerk told him he was senile---to his face! Of course, grampa produces his own evidence of the mistake, and insists on showing his records to the manager, but the mgr tells him to "calm down" (grampa wasnt shouting, just insisting on being heard).

reply to post by Hefficide


I once drove 90 minutes to my parents house once because my mother called and stated that "Dad was going to throw his new computer away".

Apparently his printer would not work. So he was going to scrap the whole tower and printer (brand new).

I get there and after calming everyone down, remove the small piece of tape that was covering the printer cartridge.

Anyone over the age of 70 should not get electronics. I'd say anyone over 50 but since I'm about there. . . . .

Reading these tech + Senior stories reminded me of something I saw in a magazine -

A computer specifically designed for Seniors.

Wow Computer

I saw this in Smithsonian magazine. They should probably advertise elsewhere too - to the *relatives* of Seniors who probably don't know it exists. Or to anyone who'd like something a bit easier to use.

I have a Mac, I find this easier than the windows PC also - another option to consider.

My Mom (70s) can be kind of pesty about this stuff too - and she still works and has Net at work - yet she calls me up all the time and asks me to "look something up" for her, and claims she "doesn't know how". They have a messy system at their office, and she's just not that well versed with the Net.

When she fully retires I will either suggest one of these new "Wow" ones, or maybe a Mac. She gets frustrated with many steps - which I fully understand because I *loathe* Windows now too, now that I have the Mac

reply to post by Hefficide


Get off my lawn!!!!

Okay, that said, it's truly a hardship for some of our elders to emerge into the modern technological zone. My father mastered the high strangeness of email, and thus your mother probably can as well.

Think about this: Do we really benefit from the internet interactions? I think we do. I think it makes it easier for people to communicate, if only to forward LOL catz to each other. My Auntie sends me Christian homespun tales nearly every day. I don't mind, except when she sends things that haven't been scanned for viri. She infected 75% of my family once with a cutesy tale that just happened to be a virus. She doesn't understand nor care about the malicious internet world, so all of us simply refuse to open up any attachments and thank her for it later.

Your mum probably will get more out of a social network, given that she's probably not going to fall prey to the Homeland Security radar.

No, don't thank me. That's what I'm here for.