Cell phones. I am one of the few people that doesn’t have one.
The process of politics. I think I watch enough TDS and have enough politically-minded friends to know what people are up in arms about all the time, but as for the process of who controls what, what controls who, who votes for who, how stuff gets done or not done, etc.
I remember being really confused about everything in government class in 9th grade. Or 10th. I still haven’t gotten over the confusion.
I honestly don’t think that most voters know about the process either, like Joey P pointed out. I know I learn a lot by trying to explain stuff to my parents. But then again my brother and some of my friends know more than I do so I can tell where I’m lacking for sure.
Ooooh…sneak bragging thread!!
Oh yeah, me too, I forgot to mention this in my list.
Gasps and then faints. How do you survive? My cell died and it was almost 18 hours before I got a new one. I was twitchy and felt naked.
My answer is men. I love them. I wants to have one of my own. I sure don’t understand them, tho.
Electricity. I swear to god when someone starts to talk about voltage and wattage and wiring and…
The most I can say is that if the plug doesn’t go in the outlet, try flipping it over.
Plus, geography. Oh, I won’t generally make the really bad mistakes like failing to ID the US on a map, but it ain’t pretty.
Reality television.
[sub]thank God![/sub]
Tris
Yeah, silly me I actually listed things I’m ashamed of rather than things I’m proud of. I should have known better on this board.
Popular culture for me, too. I mean, I know enough to reference popular shows in this post, but only to clarify which ones I have never heard of. I assume the ratings of such shows are about 99% of the population, so I am one of the rare few who doesn’t watch them. This post would look pretty silly if most people didn’t watch them either.
Seriously though, car repair. I am actually embarrassed about that.
Maths beyond basic algebra (and even then…)
Sciences other than biological ones.
I keep trying, but it won’t stay in my head.
Add me to the cars group. I can fill the gas tank, check the tire pressure, and add air if needed. And there my knowledge stops. If something goes wrong, my solution is to pull over and call AAA.
Also handyman tasks. I can plunge a toilet or turn off the water. If a task can be accomplished solely with a screwdriver, I might be able to handle it. Anything else? Call the apartment maintenance guys, that’s what they’re there for.
Any music other than classical that came out before about 2000. I can identify a couple of Beatles songs and that’s it.
I thought I knew about pop culture, but now I’m all confused about this girl in a meat suit.
Symbolism in movies/books. If you get me started I can usually run with it. If you tell me that bird seed nourishes the birds the same way money nourishes the family I can logically interpret that the bear that shows up in the backyard rummaging through the bird feeders represents the bad guys that are after your dirty money (Season 1, Sopranos). I can follow that symbolism for as long as the writers keep it somewhat in tact. My problem is that I think logically not symbolically. If it wasn’t pointed out to me to begin with, the bear in the backyard would have just been another event that I would have taken at face value and never given another thought to.
Lady Gaga, maybe?
Cars. I don’t drive, have no interest in driving, and am utterly useless about fixing cars.
Sports. No interest and no knowledge about sports. I could be a trivia whiz except sports is considered part of general trivia knowledge, and I’ll miss every single sports question - unless I were guessing wildly in a multiple choice quiz.
Sports. I wouldn’t care if sports withered and died.
Math. I deeply regret not being educated in math.
Relationships. I am incapable of maintaining relationships.
Republicans. Enough said.
Modern art. Anything after Picasso is wasted on me. I’ve gone to a few exhibitions and looked at a wedding dress made out of IUDs, read how the artist is making a statement about something and truly was unable to appreciate it.
I second the sneak-bragging bit. If you have absolutely no interest in something, what fun is there for us to read that you’re ignorant about it? A lot of us are proud not to be watching reality TV, using Facebook, watching sports, etc. It follows that we’ll be ignorant because we don’t care.
I forget who it was, but some comedian brought up TV snobs. Let’s say you DO like some show, and you say to someone, “Hey, I saw this show on TV, and–” and the person sniffs, “Oh I don’t even HAVE a TV; I read/birdwatch/grow orchids etc. etc.” The comedian’s response, which I’ve used on folk to my own enjoyment, if not theirs, was: “Yes, but you are aware that there is a big box called a TV, that shows pictures with sound, and many people have them, right?”
If you have no interest in something, then you’re not ignorant, you’re simply not interested. BORING.
OK, in the interest of disclosure, I admit that I know so little about cell phones that I still use my 5-year-old, slowly-crumbling, beat-up old cell phone. I’ve taped the back so the battery cover stops falling off, and can only read about 3 lines of text at a time because I can’t fucking see teeny tiny letters, and the screen is so small that I pretty much scroll nonstop. I’d love a nice iPhone, but to make that happen I’d have to gaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwww, educate myself on all the phone plans/figure out how to avoid being passed around like a goatskin flask like last time by unscrupulous cell phone companies and their merry “savings plans!!!”/make sure I figure out how to use it overseas w/o having to sell a kidney to pay for it/figure out whether I can keep my current number and mail address/figure out if I can transfer the stuff I downloaded on Fred Flintstone Phone over to snappy new iPhone, etc.
I need to get off my ass, but I don’t know where to start. I really need to up my game here.
Well, I was gonna say cars and sports, but KinkiNipponTourist shamed me out of it, so instead I’ll go with cooking. I have almost no idea how to cook, and what ideas I do have, are mostly wrong. I’ve dimly grasped the concept that the stove has settings between “Off” and “As hot as I can fucking make it,” but I’m not sure what purpose they serve. Seriously, I’m such a bad cook, I could burn cold cereal. And yet, I’m generally in favor of the concept of food, and the eating thereof. Plus, both my parents are amazing cooks, so it’s not like I don’t have ready access to the knowledge. But cooking is messy, and, apparently, I’m gigantic prissy baby. So I eat out a lot, or buy frozen dinners.
Sports. As anyone who’s seen my football threads knows, I’m woefully ignorant about the rules of the game despite the fact that I enjoy watching it. And my knowledge of other sports is much worse.
Cars. I know very little about them. When I buy a car, I read Consumer Reports about models and prices and go by that. Personally, if you lined up a hundred different cars and removed their logos, I couldn’t tell you what a single one of them was.
Calculus. I never learned it, which I regret. I’m currently taking a stab at reviewing my old math skills and trying to learn calculus.
Poetry. I apparently have a tin ear for poetry. I can read a work that is regarded as an undisputed classic and another work regarded as garbage and I can’t recognize the difference in quality between them.
Modern Art. The same as poetry. I can’t tell the difference between what’s supposed to be good and bad. But in the case of modern art, I have a sneaking suspicion it may be the art and not me.
Foreign languages. Despite years of work, I’ve never reached fluency in any language other than English.
eta: No sneak bragging here. These are all subjects I would like to know more about.