Another completely true account from my long and very lucky life.
For many years I operated a small one man business providing on site tuition for technical matters. Most of my clients we retired folk, perhaps the kids had persuaded them to buy a Computer, when it arrived, sat them down, gave a short lesson and left them to it and the poor parents sat there, completely bewildered, wandering what the hell just happened. Enter my good self.
Mainly through word of mouth, they would tell one of their friends of their dilemma who would mention yet another friend who had similar problems and that she had heard about this lovely man who had come over and sorted things out for them.
To cut a very long story short, I had built a nice little business doing something I would have happily done for free, I got to meet some very nice people, see some lovely homes and, in many cases, build a friendship which has lasted to today.
One of my clients was a very nice lady in her mid-70's who was recently widowed. I will call her Elaine. Living in a very nice home in one of our better suburbs. One of her sons had persuaded her she needed a computer and the usual thing resulted. Someone suggested she contact me and I went to visit for the first time. The story was I would give a 2 hour lesson, we would stop for a coffee after one hour and then carry on. I am a good teacher, my client list showed this to be true and I kept my lessons to very simple basics. Often a period would be spent just using the mouse until they were comfortable with keeping it steady on the screen. Showing the secrets of right clicking an object and then advancing to Emails, Internet browsing, Search engines etc. It would depend on the client's ability but often it could take three or four lessons before they were comfortable about branching off on their own and, additionally, I gave free telephone support.
OK, back to Elaine. I arrived on time and was greeted by an attractive tall, slender lady probably in her mid 70's. I later discovered she was 16 years older than myself. She took me through to her very nice bookshelf lined study and we sat at a lovely old writing desk. Everything in her home was in incredibly good taste. Obviously the family were quite well off.
We got started on the first lesson and it was immediately apparent that we were starting at the very beginning so, loading the simple Microsoft Patience game. I got her started on using the mouse. She was a very keen Bridge player so a Solitaire game was child's play to her but, the important thing was, she was using the mouse with more and more confidence. The lesson progressed well from there and at the end she happily paid me for my time and we agreed on a time for next week.