I find that telling people straight out, "It's not a weirdo one-armed half-arsed wingnut." pretty much always works. You have to break through the fact that not only do Q/R skewers not work like how they look like they work, they don't work the way anything else the newbie has ever used works. And I do mean nothing. I can't think of anything that J. Random Larval Cyclist will have used that uses a side-turning camming clamp to pinch a thing into another thing.

We forget it, but quick release skewers are really friggin' weird.

--Shannon