He's No Bill Gates

The hospital that Dr. Daddy works at is using a new computer charting system. It's quite involved and everyone who charts at the hospital has had to go to a four hour class to learn how to use the new system.
Not a big deal for those who know how to use computers already. For Dr. Daddy, this is MONUMENTAL. Despite having graduated from MIT (that's right...the Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY), the man cannot use a computer to save his life. He barely knows how to check email and God forbid he ever has an attachment to open. He breaks out into a sweat and calls me upstairs to do it for him.
Dr. Daddy graduated from MIT in 1980. At that time, computers were just coming into the picture. He took one computer class the entire time he was there. This was back when the computers looked like little Atari games and the triangle "turtle" was your guide. I'm pretty sure anyone under 30 won't remember that.
Dr. Daddy likens taking this class to childbirth with no epidural. (remember, he's an anesthesiologist!) It was SO extremely painful that he simply cannot bear the idea of going back and doing it again because it can't possibly be easier the second time around.
I've tried to help him learn things here and there but to no avail. He's pretty resistant to change anyway (when we got married in 2000 he was still wearing socks and underwear from 1985) and this particular issue is no different.
Last night was his computer class. My best friend, who is also one of his fellow anesthesiologists, drove him to make sure he would get there on time. She was also taking the class. They decided to take it together so that she could help him if he needed it.
Four hours later, she calls me laughing hysterically. She'd just dropped him off at home (I had just heard him stomp into the house) and couldn't wait to call me and tell me how it went. Apparently, it was a disaster from the get go.
First of all, he forgot his reading glasses. He had to squint the whole time and got a big headache. Second, he didn't get enough to eat and clearly did not drink enough beer before arriving. So now he's crabby and has a headache.
He asked endless questions thereby driving everyone else insane. Most people had expected to be done withing two hours, but with all of his questions it took four. At one point during the class one of his partners raised his hand and asked if everyone (meaning Dr. Daddy) would stop asking so many questions so they could all get the hell outta there.
At another point in the class, the instructor was showing everyone how to admit a patient and make a diagnosis based on the information the computer gave them. Dr. Daddy raises his hand and says "Anesthesiologists don't even admit patients and wouldn't use this system anyway. You don't diagnose a patient based on what a computer says. This is ridiculous!"
The instructor replied, "Sir, some of the people taking this class are DOCTORS and may need this information."
Obviously, she had assumed that based on the fact he was so computer illiterate and so not enlightened that he must be a nurse anesthetist and not a doctor. Which is not to say that Nurse Anesthetists aren't brilliant...please no disgruntled comments...she just figured that an MD couldn't possibly be so computer dumb.
My friend said that he kept getting completely flustered when the instructor would use basic terms and he had no flipping idea what she was talking about. Terms like "minimize". You see, I've shown him how to minimize a window on a screen, but I described it as "making the box smaller or bigger" instead of using the terms minimize and maximize. He's so concrete that he just couldn't see past the actual words and just figure it out.
Needless to say, when he got home he was not a happy camper. And he didn't take well to my girlfriend and I getting a good laugh at his expense. I'm pretty sure that he learned absolutely nothing from the class. Thankfully, he still gets to do his anesthesia charting with paper and pen. He's quite proud that he has the best penmanship of anyone in his group. Lord help him when that's computerized, too!