I am not good at this, despite its command

T0 my deep, everlasting shame, I've never come close to mastering Excel (I want to put a '!!' after the name). Even the most innocent and simple looking spreadsheets put me in a tizzy. Asking me to work with a spreadsheet that does something other than record information will shoot me up to DEFCON 1.

So not all is puppy dogs, cashmere and birding around here. Any ideas how to overcome this spreadsheet fear?