Dude, I totally get your two biggest issues - you're defensive due to feeling embarrassed and he's trying to do things at too complex a level. It's a hard problem and often requires that people know how to teach the basics, which seem too obvious to teach.
It's a bit hard to explain how to get good at computers... "use them" would be the answer, except my "use them" is different from your "use them" otherwise we'd both be programming, right?
I think the real key is fucking around and breaking things, but having the patience to diagnose the problem, google it, and fix it. That teaches you a lot.
Even before that, you need to get familiar with various terms describing hardware and software. For example, when you look at the box: what's a monitor and what's a computer? Okay, that sounds insulting, but some people bring in their screen to be fixed when their computer stops working, so let's start there. Now grab your computer wiz SO, open up a computer, and point to different things inside. What's that? What does it do? What does it cost? How do you replace it? Obviously the computer case is the case, but the other stuff... motherboard, power supply, cpu, gpu, ram, hard drives, disc players, power cables, various signal cables, fans/cooling, and so on. Then look at the back of the computer: what are all these plugs for, what do they do? USB, ethernet, VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, serial, speakers, microphone, and so on. What's the difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0? How can you tell which is which? What kind of devices hook into each?
Then you boot up the PC. What's it doing right now? Why did it go to a logo, then a black screen, then a windows logo, then your login, then your desktop? What does each stage do? Why?
Then you log in. What's happening? Why is it so slow for the first minute? Can I do anything to change that? Oh, it's because all these things are starting up at once? Can I see what's starting up? Do I really need (for example, an instant messaging client) to start when I log in? Can I remove it from the list?
Then you use various software. Can you open up a new software and use it? You're lost, what do you do? How do you google?
At this stage, the question "How do I google?" is so insanely, incredibly important, that it's impossible to overstate how much you need to know. It sounds insulting - "I just type shit in, idiot" - but it's not. With the right methods, you can find pretty much the sum of common human knowledge, and a good portion of esoteric knowledge as well. You just need to get there.
"Excel doesn't work." Terrible. Google has no idea what to show you; there are 50000000 reasons excel "doesn't work." The words "doesn't work" mean "it has melted my computer down into a pile of plastic and metal." If it's anything else - like, for example, your formula giving you an error - "doesn't work" is the worst possible thing you can search for. (Yet any tech support person will tell you that their clients are always telling them those words.) No, you need to learn how to look for the error the program gives you - errors are your friend! - and copy/paste or retype verbatim into google to fix the issue. No error? You need to cleverly but simply summarize the issue. "Excel formula doesn't evaluate on enter key." Or "Excel change cell color" if you can't find the button to change the cell color. Even better: "Excel 2010 change cell color." Don't type "Make excel blue" because that's not a good description of what you're trying to do.
Figuring out how to google the problem is usually about 95% of solving a problem, because you need to understand the problem in order to formulate your search query, and by the time you can do that the rest is pretty much trivial. Understand problem -> google it -> read results. The other 5% is reading and trying the solutions. (Also another 100%, to add up to 200%, is patience! Seriously, this shit takes time.)
If you can figure out how to summarize your problem well, every time, and google it, you become ... well, not necessarily the computer expert, but the computer can-do person. Every IT person will tell you that google is at least 80% of their job. If they can do it, so can you!
Only once you can do all these things should you think about getting into programming. Programming is the art of instructing an idiot savant: it's a retarded machine, it has no idea how to do anything but what you tell it, and it will execute your instructions perfectly even if it means the wrong result or a crash or whatever. But if you can give it precisely the right instructions, it will do them perfectly, incredibly quickly, and give you your results. That means it takes supreme patience to be a programmer; anyone can pick up a language and syntax and tools, but patience is grown and developed. If you're able to google any problem that pops up, if you've learned to love error messages because they help you fix issues, then ask for more.
