What do you know?

I know a lot of my stories focus on old people, but that's because they are the majority of my clients. This story, however, is about a much younger person.

Contrary to popular belief with my typical clientele, I do not know what I know because of my age. I know what I know because I was either taught it, or actively sought out the information. A lot of what I know I was taught by my dad. My age had nothing to do with it, I learned it because I wanted to. But to be told that I know about computers because I grew up around computers I think would be similar to telling a guitarist he's so good because he grew up with a guitar in the home. He's definitely not good because he practiced constantly and worked to perfect his skill. No, it's simply because of the presence of the guitar.

To refute this kind of thinking, one of my favorite stories to share with those who would make these kinds of statements is about a college student I had to help, someone a few years younger than me. Now, I've helped lots of college students, and will help more as time goes on, but this one in particular stands out because of what happened.

This student comes running up to my counter, clearly in a panic. We weren't busy that day, so I was free to help her right away. She seems mortified and ready to break down in tears. I get her to calm down long enough to tell me what's going on. She tells me that her mouse has stopped working, and she can't use the touchpad because it's been broken for a long time (she'd had the computer for a few years by that point) and she didn't know what to do, because she didn't have any money to buy a new mouse right then, and she had a paper due that night, and she couldn't do anything without the mouse.
 

I'll say this, because of my knowledge and skills with computers, and many other tech people reading this will relate, it is entirely possible to do everything on a computer without a mouse, and if you learn what to do, can make certain tasks even faster without one. I wasn't going to teach her the intricacies of using keyboard shortcuts right then, so I figured I'd fix the issue at hand. Why her mouse wasn't working. So I ask her if she has the mouse with her, she pulls it out of the laptop bag, and hands it to me. I notice it's wireless, see there's no dongle plugged into the laptop, and find the dongle in its compartment in the mouse. I take out the dongle, plug it into one of her free USB ports, and... the mouse works! I ask her if the issue is intermittent (read: random), and she tells me no, it didn't work at all. She's overjoyed that I fixed it! But then she asks me the question I always get.

"What did you do?"

I tell her I only plugged in the dongle and moved the mouse to see if it had connected and nothing else. She looks at me confused.

"What did you plug in?"

I show her the wireless dongle for the mouse.

"This is the wireless dongle that tells the computer to connect to the mouse."

She goes wide-eyed and her face turns red. Apparently, she'd never thought to check for that. She tells me her brother had borrowed the mouse right before it stopped working, and he must have returned it to her with the dongle in the compartment, and she'd forgotten it existed because it had been plugged into her computer since she bought the mouse.

So that's one of many stories of young people who don't know something about computers. I see it often, and I always wish those same older folks were around to witness it so they'd see that their age has nothing to do with learning how to use a computer.