I was hanging out on my parents' front porch the other evening, having a toddy with my dad and talking of random things. At one point, he interrupts me and hold his hand up for silence. Dad: Shhh... Do you hear that? Me: *Listening carefully*......... You mean that bird? Dad: Yeah, I think its a (some kind of bird)... Look, there it is at the very top of that pine tree! Sure enough, there is a very small outline of a very small bird at the top of a very far pine tree. Dad: Yep! That is definitely a (some kind of bird)! Look at the shape of it, and it's bright orange head! Me: *Squinting and looking as hard as I can* ... Well, I can tell its a bird... Dad: Here, try with the binoculars. So I look and sure enough, it had a bright orange head. Me: So let me get this straight- you were able to identify that bird by just its call, and were able to confirm it by an extremely far away outline with your normal eyesight alone (he hadn't used the binoculars)? Dad: Well, yeah. Here, read this book and it'll teach you everything you'd need. He handed me a giant ornithology dictionary that I wouldn't try to begin to read if my life depended on it. Not because its not interesting, mind you, but there is absolutely no way that 1) an encyclopedia could hold my shiny-shiny attention span long enough for me to get through it, and 2) even if I did manage to read it, there is no way that I would be able to retain the information well enough to apply it to a random bird I'd encounter. My dad did grow up on a farm, so I guess ornithology has been his hobby for a long time, but I just don't get it. Its the same with my buddies that duck hunt- there is no way I can identify what kind of ducks they are while in flight like they seem to be able to do with ease. And the funny thing is, I actually have great eyesight, at least according to the physicals I used to take when I played football (they said I had 20/13). I just can't. Focus: What skill do you find yourself completely unable to comprehend, much less master yourself?
I cannot convert the physical world to measurements. Like, I can tell if something is longer or shorter than something else, but I can't accurately predict what it's height would be in feet/inches. Something might be heavy or light, but I don't know how many pounds. This holds true for everything. How far away something is, how tall, how wide, how loud, how bright, ho wmuch time, how fast, etc etc. It's not that I have any problem perceiving these things or comprehending them in a physical sense, I just can't attach a standardized number to them.
Astronomy. I took an astronomy class in college and I really wanted it to be awesome. I wanted to be able to look up at the stars and understand what was going on. At least a tiny bit. But then we started talking about declination and ascension and I can't figure out if it means left or right and then all I wanted was to look at those old pictures of Jupiter that Voyager took.
I suck at estimating spatial relation as well. I can give you directions somewhere fine, but if you ask me how far away it is, my answers are either "near" or "far". I would love to learn to play a musical instrument. However, it seems I have zero aptitude for it. I've tried and failed on numerous occasions.
For the life of me I don't understand bird watching, I surely don't. They're fucking birds! Whenever I take Li'l Bandit to the state park, there are always legions of people with binoculars and cameras that cost more than my car in hopes of seeing the rare Double Breasted Red-Cocked Turd Warbler (or something like that). There's a park nearby that has some alligators. The first time I went there, the woman working at the front desk asked me what kind of birds I was hoping to see. "I'm here to see the alligators, I can see birds at home." was my response. Alt. Focus: What skill do you find other people completely unable to comprehend, much less master? It boggles my mind how people can't maintain their cars. I'm talking about basic things like checking fluid levels and tire pressure, and noticing/taking action when something is obviously wrong (a leak, the car making a weird noise, etc.) The other day I was out on a service call for an exhaust leak on a car, and while I was there, I checked all of the fluids (which is part of my routine). That car only had about 2 quarts of oil in it (it takes 6)! If that woman had continued driving much longer, she would have been fucked. If people would just check those things (or take it to someone like me to check it for them!) instead of letting shit hit the fan, they could save themselves a lot of trouble, time, and money. EDIT: This is me all the way. I've tried (and failed) to play the guitar, the harmonica, the saxophone, the violin, and the kazoo. I can't even sing. My mom was always very musical and had high hopes for me to be the same way. Sorry, mom.
I can do both these things. What I *can't* do is anything related to gardening. I have killed more plants in the name of "I want something other than dead grass on the front lawn" than I care to think about. In fact, Crown, if you're looking for a part-time job, I would consider posting for a lawn boy/gardener.
I can only go so far before numbers simply stop making any sense to me. I can follow along for a little bit when something is described to me in terms of numbers, but then at some point my brain just hits a brick wall and I can't understand what you're trying to say. Math, economics, and finance are all something I vaguely comprehend but won't ever master. It's just not how my brain works. However, I am really awesome at adding, calculating how much something would be on sale, and figuring out the tip. All of my other right brained brethren can't seem to handle those things anymore without the calculators on their phones. As far as right brainy things, I am either competent or good at most creative pursuits except for anything music-related. I used to be decent at the piano, but I gave it up and haven't been able to pick it back up again. I've tried a dozen times to learn the guitar, I tried once with the drums. I just can't do it. I especially don't understand how people can write music, and not just play what has already been written. And I ESPECIALLY don't understand how people can improvise right on the spot. I always think that's nutty.
I can't draw a straight line, it's fucked up. My grandfather is an artist and my dad isn't half bad at drawing shit either, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to draw a line or god forbid a decent looking circle.
Can't whistle, can't snap my fingers. Two things women LOVE having done to them. You get the sound of silence with either effort, and don't ask me why. It's a medical mystery.
1. Drawing. Goddamn this pissed me off back in the day. "AG, you were supposed to draw a horse, why is there a painstakingly-drawn dining room chair on your page". Yeah, and you were supposed to be an artist, not a shitty arts and crafts teacher. No, I'm not bitter at all. 2. Sense of direction. I have been lost within 2 kilometres of the house I've lived in for 3 years. I suspect these things are related. My ability to visualize objects / directions was apparently stillborn. 3. Singing. I just don't 'get' pitch/tone etc. What I lack in skill I make up for in raw passion, to the chagrin of unfortunate passers-by.
I suck at chemistry. Somehow I managed to get through chemistry up to organic I, but I had to take organic twice to get through that shit. Fuck me sideways with a yard stick, even though I can memorize all the names of the functional groups and all the little indications on the IR spec and see all the big picture stuff, it just doesn't come together too well in my head. I can't get from all the little details to all the big picture stuff. It is maddening because I am fully aware of how important this stuff is. It is a big freakin deal, and even though I've sat through 6 semesters of chem classes in college, I am just bad at it.
I'll jump on the I suck at arts and crafts badnwagon although that doesn't affect my photoshop or editing skills. Crosswords. I have a fairly wide range of vocabulary and knowledge of English but give me a crossword and I'm not allowed to cheat then there is next to no hope of me finishing it. Any number sort of puzzle is done in a flash but for some reason even if I know the word it never comes to mind when I need it.
I am so bad at drawing and handwriting that I actually had it diagnosed as a disability so I could do university exams on a laptop. I apparently have Dysgraphia, which in my case is an impairment between the visual cortex and fine motor skills. I can type at 120 words a minute without thinking about it and if I focus on a typing exam or something, I can crack 150. I can juggle fire staffs and spin poi. But I can't write my name legibly five times in a row. I suck at visual use of space. When I did an IQ test, I came back gifted/impaired. I barely scrape into mensa range overall, but I bubba gump style fail at the visual use of space bit where you rearrange the blogs into shapes. I don't understand gardening or bird watching. That's what poor people and the elderly are for. I don't understand why someone with the option to do something else would ever choose to do those things. I'm mediocre at riding a bicycle. I can do it and I'm functional, but that thing where people do walking starts, with their foot on one peddle and then twist over to start riding normally? Standing on the peddles to ride up steep hills? I suck at that shit.
I mentioned gardening in the other thread but bird watching kind of lingers with me. We have a bird bath my grandfather gave us and it is kind of fun to watch birds swoop in and wash off. It's kind of cute in that girly otter way. I couldn't see doing it as a hardcore hobby but I am determined to see a Bald Eagle flying free in nature before I die. I too have never been able to draw. Matt Greoning did a 30 second, how to draw Homer Simpsons head, during a Simpsons commercial once. I spent YEARS doodling it in my notebooks instead of taking notes in class. It is still worse than passable and if I try and draw the body, no dice, looks like I had a seizure. The most creative thing Ive done with this, THE MOST, was creating a full page Homer head where his brain was visible and made into one of those squiggly mazes, with dead ends being things Homer likes and finishing at beer and donuts. So fuck people that can draw and fuck truly creative people. A buddy from high school was, the artist kid, in my school. I think it was maybe 30% 10,000 hours, 70% creative talent spilling out of his head. He was severely ADHD and I think started drawing just to occupy his hands. He can whip up the coolest art you'd ever seen in 10 minutes. If I ever get a tattoo he's designing it. But as far as creative goes, I couldn't come up with shit if you had a gun to my head for a year. This doesn't just mean drawing and painting. I played the guitar for a few years and made the middle school stage band which you had to try out for and was filled with the best music students. I mean I guess a lot of it was I didn't really know shit beyond the very basics of guitar. But everyone got to make up their own solo for Hang on Sloopy. I picked exactly one jazz cord to try and build one off of. It never sounded anything like a guitar solo at all. Thank god none of theme were actually recorded to any media. Fucking embarrassing.
School in general. Im a shitty student, always have been. It continues to boggle mind as to how I ended up with 2 degrees. I graduated high school with a 2.5 and college with a 3.1, not exactly stellar. Ive never had a problem doing well and being successful professionally, but as for school? Ive never been good at it. Maybe its because I understood the actual value-added nature of it (not much) early on and didnt take it seriously, but Im gearing up for an MBA program and I hope i dont fuck it up. My brother and sister both excel academically and my father made the point last weekend of, "Hey youre the only one in this family that didnt graduate cum laude." It wasnt in a mean sense, but more in a bewildered observational way. Oh well.
Math. For the life of me I cannot do anything more than the absolute basics. If it's beyond fourth or fifth grade math I just can't comprehend it, and even some of that is tough for me to do. Fractions, algebra, geometry, for me, all of them are like trying to decipher ancient Egyptian before the Rosetta Stone. And FUCK word problems, they might as well be in an alien language. It's the only academic subject I have to struggle just to get a D in. Everything else I can ace with ease. Handwriting. I have the handwriting of a second grader who has trouble with handwriting. Even my printing sucks. I had to help my son with homework not too long ago and my writing looked exactly like my son's. By the way, my mother worked as a seamstress for 50 years, and she is not an asshole.
I have a great vocabulary. I've been reading constantly since I was about 4, often while walking because I like it so much. I routinely aced English standardized tests, I went to law school, I write, etc, etc. I fucking suck at Scrabble. Just utter and complete balls at a game I should be awesome at. I don't really play it anymore because of the huge disconnect between how good everyone expects me to be vs. the reality.
Focus: Tying my shoes. I don't know what I do wrong but everyone who has watched me tie my shoes has remarked how I do it weird/wrong.
I just have to say that I love bird-watching, if only because I have the inexplicable need to know the name of every bird ever. Right now we have some European starlings nesting in our eaves and I feel intensely satisfied that I know that. Focus: Making conversation. I watch people just flow through conversations easy breezy, and I get the sense that when I talk to people they feel like they're being interrogated. And then my head gets tired and I want to push people off a building just so we don't have to talk anymore. I imagine that's why prostitutes are great, you just pay them to show up and pay them to leave, easy entrance to a social interaction and easy exit.
You are not alone. Learning calculus (and especially trigonometry) was like trying to pound a square block into a round hole in my head. It just ain't gonna happen. I can run arithmetic in my head easily, but once you turn the numbers into letters and add cosines and shit, I'm done. Also, free form wood carving and shaping with hand tools is no problem for me, especially if we're talking chisels and razors. But I can't pound a nail or make a square frame to save my life! My hand-eye coordination is terrible and levels are useless in my hands, because I'll always fuck up drawing a level line or making a square cut somehow.