To make up for the lost client I mentioned last week, a different type of a new client merits mention. A woman I met at the Senior Center called me this week and asked if I could help her husband. They just bought a new computer and he needed help setting it up. Immediately I had an image of a typically computer-naive senior who wanted a computer to exchange emails with his grandchildren. That was not the case.

The gentleman needed help because he could not see well enough to sort out the various connectors. He is partially blind and cannot hear much better. To give himself insulin shots, he dons a pair of glasses with binocular magnifying lenses on a perch about four inches in front of his regular lenses. This gadget also serves to allow him to puzzle out the inscriptions on CDs. That was clever. Alongside his work area was a metal whiteboard with magnetic note cards. Each card had large printing on it. They were passwords, authentication codes and the various memory joggers that someone who cannot easily read needs to do the things we take for granted.

His eyelids drooped and his hands were thick with arthritis, but he was in good spirits and shook my hand with vigor. It quickly became obvious that he spent much of his time on the computer conversing with friends and playing chess. If he were physically sound, he would not need my help. In fact, he really did not want me there. He was nice about it, but in some sense my role in our little drama was similar to his special insulin-shot glasses. I could tutor him, but that was not really what he needed or wanted. He wanted his new computer to be set up like his old one only better. He also wanted me to take his old one away once we were satisfied we had transferred his data. He asked me to scrub the HD of his personal things and donate it.

We set to work to get him online and quickly had his Internet service set up and the fonts on his new, very large, monitor set up like he wanted. Only now he was even more frustrated because he did not yet have his “programs and stuff” copied from the old computer to his new one. I took it to mean that he did not have email and favorites transferred. By this time, I was already late for another appointment. I asked how he had planned to transfer from the old to the new. He shrugged and said that he guessed he was a bit confused. By that time we had pushed the envelope on time. I told him I would take his old computer home and make a CD of all the stuff he wanted to copy. Then I would come back and install everything. Once he was satisfied, I would scrub his personal information from the old computer and probably donate it to a school child. He was happy with that.

This type of situation is delicate. The last thing this old warrior needed was to have a busy geek interposed between him and his only real outlet to the world. He obviously had picked up whatever skills he needed, but still could use some tutoring. For instance, he occasionally seemed to lose track of his cursor. I showed him how to activate the finder so he could hit Ctrl and see the moving circles around his cursor. He liked that. But when I tried to change other accessibility functions to be more suitable, he declined. He would do it himself. Again, I was like the special glasses. He needed me to help him do a specific job, but he would much rather do the rest himself regardless of efficiency or even frustration level. You have to respect that spirit.

He reminded me of the scene in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” when old Will Varner refuses to take a pain killer because as long as he was in pain, he knew he was alive. My client wanted to participate in creating the environment in which he could feel alive. More power to him.

Helping people like this new client is rewarding to me, but not as financially rewarding as helping small businesses function. If you are considering tutoring for hire, keep this in mind. Why are you doing it and what are the reasonable rewards? Financial rewards and emotional rewards are not always present in equal amounts.

Click here to read about my new tutorial on helping seniors. The new version has grown considerably over the original. It has more topics and anecdotes, and fewer typos. While you’re at it, check out my expanded tutorial on decision theory.