For me it is dealing with the airlines. I would love to fly to Europe, but the very idea of trying to navigate finding a cheap flight is overwhelming to me. I know that whatever I decide, everyone in every seat around me on the plane will say that they got a cheaper flight with some other benefits I hadn’t even considered.
Has it occurred to anyone here that the things we are ignorant about tend to be stuff that is TMI (too much information)? Cars, that is, what is under the hood used to be fairly straightforward. Now under the hood is stuffed to the gills to the point where if someone wants to replace a part it takes hours to remove parts to get to the part to replace.
Buying a cell phone and a plan. It is overwhelming to me. I just as soon do without one. I would love a cool 4G phone, but I know I would feel ripped-off. They see a sucker coming.
Popular culture. Charlie Sheen. TMI. Need I say more?
Politics. OMG. Used to be simple. Vote the way your parents did. Or not.
Wall Street. You’ve got to be kidding, right? Does anyone outside of Wall Street understand what they are doing?
Yes, cell phones. I don’t know what "G"s are, or how many you’d need (3G? 4G?), or what makes a phone smart, or… all of that stuff. Cell phone commercials throw around terms that apparently everyone is supposed to understand, but I don’t. And apparently, signing up for a cell phone plan is both harder to know what I’m getting in for and harder to get out of than getting married is.
Oops. I’m not interested in cars and sports, then.
The who-is-currently-screwing-who-over-part of politics. I don’t know office politics, either. And I should be interesed in both, and know a lot about it, because part of that is actually my job. I do communications for a local government. But I just don’t have the head for it.
The electronics in our house. If it is electronical rather then mechanical, and it has got a cord, it is my husbands responsibility. I wish it was otherwise, but then again, I don’t have the time to keep all that rolling smoothly, too. So I guess that’s mmore a matter of specialization.
Who lives in our street. I know two neighbours very well, but I wouldn’t recognize my other neighbours if I met them anywhere else. I hate that an dthink it is kind of autistic of me. My husband on the other and knows that the blue Toyota sedan usually parked two places down from our car belongs to the couple living across from us on number 14. I don’t even know who lives on number 14.
Geography. During those old Trivial Pursuit games, it kicked my butt every time.
Names. I can’t remember names. I know faces and can say ‘Hey, how are you?’ but if you ask me to tell you your name, I’ll fall through the floor every time. Its embarrassing too, because people get Enormously offended, thinking I’m dissing them or slighting them. Honestly, I’m not. If I could go around with a Polaroid, take pictures, write names at the bottom & study them like flash-cards, I would.
Where to park cheaply in Manhattan.
Bald-faced lying. How do you do that face-to-face & not give yourself away? I never could.
I’d like to understand economics better. I understand classical fundamentals like the law of supply and demand and price elasticity, but more complex economic interactions go right over my head. I read Paul Krugman’s "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, which discussed at length the details of interactions between national economies, currency exchange, currency stabilization/destabilization, and myriad other factors that all interact to occasionally plunge nations into financial chaos. It all seemed logically presented, and he even had some small-scale examples that he used to help explain larger issues, but after reading it I don’t think I understood much of it.
Computer and office skills in general. I see a lot of references to how one must be awfully stupid not to know these things, but I have never worked in an office environment or taken any classes that would shed any light on the subject. Fortunately, you don’t have to be very computer-literate to use the internet.
Politics. I feel like I should know enough to have a conversation about it and make informed decisions at election time, but I don’t know where to begin.
Colours, as in what goes with what. I’m not colour blind but I might as well be. I’m extremely conservative in the paint colours I choose when I do finally get around to having the house painted because I’m hopeless at deciding what’ll look good with what. And what might look good with what I already have.
Similarly with fashion. I tend to err on the side of caution because I’m pathetic at working out what colours go well together. I’d like to be better at this sort of stuff but I suspect it’s one of those you’ve-either-got-it-or-you-haven’t things. Sadly, I haven’t.
I cannot operate bra closures. I’ve attempted to remove bras from dozens* of women, and except for the front close kind I invariably wind up fumbling with them for a few seconds (or longer if I try to use one hand).
I attribute this to the fact that in college I tended to associate with girls who didn’t wear bras often.
Personal finances… I know I have a pension. Don’t really know what that means. I know next to nothing about the stock market, or investments, nor do I have any idea what the following means: junk bonds, IRA, 401K…
My husband handles all of our finances. He could be secretly funneling all my money into an offshore account for his Bahamian mistress.
I am extremely embarrassed about this, but frankly, am too lazy/time strapped to do anything about it.
Hm. Did I write this post and forget all about it? Because it sure is exactly what I would write. And I really,* really *want to learn the stuff. In art, in the movies, in literature, I always want to know how to look for the symbolism and stuff, but I always miss it until someone points it out, and then it all makes sense, and like you said, I can go with it from there.
Someone on this board posted a link to a guy who analyzed the symbolism of The Shining and I clicked that link and read that whole thing, then read all the other movies the guy decoded, too. I eat that stuff up with a spoon. And I love that sometimes the whole theory can be just wrong. Still, I will follow someone down that rabbit hole if their theories even* sound *correct.
As for things I wish I wasn’t ignorant about; there are too many to count. I mean, really, think of the infinite knowledge to be had on so many topics. But I do notice that everytime I try to grasp something interesting about the Universe or philosophy or just contemplating the beginning of everything, it is my utter ignorance of math and science that trips me up everytime. I will always regret dropping out of middle school. It is my one and only regret in life.
Sports. Like football and basketball. I know next to nothing about them, and get somewhat embarrassed at work when the water cooler discussion is about sports.
U.S. Civil War and WW II. Seems everyone I work with knows all about these wars, the generals, the battles, etc. Embarrassed to admit I know little about them.
True. Flying is a drag unless you are going to embrace it as some sort of game. Shoes off, metal out, 1 bag on, 1 bag up, Ipods off, step to the left… and on and on. But don’t compare prices with people; it’ll only make you unhappy and you’ll never know if it was a true deal or some one-upsmanship the person you talking to is spinning. “A new car? Too bad you didn’t talk to me. I got a buddy on TinCanAlley who owes me favors & I could a got it for you for half what you paid.” :rolleyes:
I always had a sneaky suspicion that the paranoid craze to have everyone lock up their WiFi routers was just to force people to buy 3G & 4G phones with $100 a month [del]habits[/del] data plans. I feel guilty enough now with beat up old RAZR & a $20 plain old phone plan.
Oh and ditto on Mr Sheen, poor guy. I don’t click on the interviews or watch the shows that dis him. He seems like stress hit him way too hard; like he needs time away to center & get healthy.
If I am not interested in something, I am incapable of learning about it. It amazes people that someone as smart as I am can be so ignorant about driving and cars (never done it, don’t care to).
Chalk another one up for cell phones/communications technology other than “buy Tracfone and activate/buy minutes”. For instance, I have no idea what Count Blucher means here:
It’s even worse with the computer threads here. I’m drawn to reading the threads on how Dopers are optimizing their PCs, installing this and that, troubleshooting, etc. These people have such advanced and esoteric knowledge and it’s obvious that many are self-trained. I sit here with my expensive PC and I know that if I knew more about it I could do so much more with it, but I have no idea how to go about learning more. When I try to find books on the subject, most are actually too simple – “the keyboard is an input device, the CPU is for processing, etc.” And the rest might as well be in Advanced Obscurese.
Honestly, you’re not missing that much. Most of the optimizing and modifying people do with their PCs is to make them better for gaming. There’s hardly anything you might do with a PC at home that you can’t do on a standard low-end laptop, other than gaming.
(sigh) The more I read here, the more I realize how very much I don’t know about anything. Smart phones. Computers. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Buying a house, buying a car. Math. Pensions, 401Ks, stocks and bonds, mortgages. I’m beginning to feel like an amoeba, just derping, waving nutrition into my protoplasm with my cilia. And I’m considered ‘smart’ (if you call being a fount of useless information ‘smart’ - I’m a whiz at Trivial Pursuit)…If I was transported back to the Dark Ages and started babbling about airplanes, cell phones, and electricity, they would think I was mad, and if I was lucky, they’d just put me to work washing dishes or plucking chickens.
I love all that stuff to. I really wish I could just pick up on it on my own, but it’s not even that I can’t (which I can’t), but it’s that the symbolism doesn’t even cross my mind. The very thought that there might be something beyond face value doesn’t even enter my brain. Of course there are also times where someone will point something out to me in a work of art and I want to say “Well maybe the artist just though a big blue brush stroke looked nice there, it doesn’t always have to represent something…you know that right”
Anyways, when the Sopranos was on, I loved following along with the discussions here, we picked that show apart one word at a time and it was very interesting. Right down to why Tony said a word with a certain inflection, why he was breathing so loud in a certain scene, why they chose this song instead of that song, why the decided to go with Van Morrison’s cover of this song instead of the original etc…Again, when the discussion is going, I can happily join in and hold my own, but without it, I wouldn’t have given it a second though, much less watching the same scene 4 times over the next three days to see if Silvio had a red handkerchief or if Artie charged Tony for his dinner.