“The amazing thing about the waltzing bear is not how well it waltzes, but that it waltzes at all.”
I’m not surprised to find, say, a literature grad student or theater buff that can discuss the characters in Titus Andronicus, but I was very surprised when a carpenter working on a project at my house responded to my comment about the tongue-and-groove he was working on “missing a tongue” by saying, “Yep, just like Lavinia.” My reaction was hopefully muted enough to not be insulting, but I did say something like, “You mean the character Lavinia?” and he just grinned and said, “Yeah, Shakespeare’s a hobby.”
For my own part, I can say I know showtunes. I won a bet last year, driving along with someone who had satellite radio and a Broadway channel, by saying I could name the show for at least seven of the next ten songs, and only missed one. (“Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me,” from By Jupiter, a Rodgers and Hart production from 1942, which I didn’t have but now do).
So brag on yourself a bit: what can you do, what do you know, that no one would ever expect you to?
Great example. I’ve done that at Ren Faires, always with hollow thumps as the knife smacks the target harmlessly, sideways, and drops to the ground. It LOOKS so easy.
Normally I dress very very blah, yet I can put together ensembles that will knock your eyes out. People pay me to come over to their houses and (I quote) “put together an amazing outfit from things that look like they would never go together at all.”
Everything I do surprises people. For whatever reason I apparently look like someone who has no knowledge or skills whatsoever. Especially when I tell people I’m an artist, they think I’m kidding.
Cooking! I generally live off cold pizza and Coke, so it always surprises people when I make some genuinely tasty barbecue brisket, or a curry that I kept slow-cooking for a good ten hours. Not high cuisine, certainly, but to my friends, it’s a lot like a waltzing bear
Hit a baseball and throw a football. I’m a nerd, you see. I play chess, I write, I read, I study physics (for example) just for fun. So they’re not surprised that I can do a magic trick or cook, for instance.
But hitting a baseball? “Where’d the geek learn to play sports?”, they’d say. I did have a childhood, you know!
I’m a fat slob but I am very knowledgeable about the nutritional value of food. I really do know a lot about how to eat healthy, and cook healthy too. I’m actually quite knowledgeable about exercise and how the human body works, too.
Of course, those of us who are ex-military (especially combat arms) have a whole other skill set that just doesn’t come up very often, in civilian life.
I’m ex-USA Infantry, and currently work as a librarian. Back in the day, though, I was a Dragon gunner. Killin’ ain’t my bi’ness no more.
I think my sense of humour surprises people more than anything. I’m a quiet person by nature, and reserved when I first get to know someone, but I have a very ribald, inappropriate sense of humour. I love making a good, dirty joke with someone who has only seen my quiet, reserved side and watching as they first look a little shocked, then burst out laughing.
Cat Whisperer stole my post.
But the other things is, dogs love me. I’ve only had cats my entire post-college life, so people think I must be a cat person. I’m not. I love big dogs and they love me back.
Many of my hobbies are representative of your typical rural Texan. My favorite pastime is fishing and a good portion of the food on the dinner table I grow myself. Wednesday night is bowling night and most Sunday afternoons you will find me target practicing behind the house.
I also play piano, and I’m not talking about “chopsticks.” I’m talking about classical piano. Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Mozart, etc. This fact is jaw droppingly surprising to most people. There have been people who, upon hearing me play for the first time, have been moved to tears.
The fact that I, a theatre technician, am pretty scientifically literate, surprises people. I can hold serious and fairly high-level conversations with all my biologist friends about their research without much explanation.
I can also do just about any kind of partner dance (swing, waltz, foxtrot, salsa, tango) that comes up, which is a big surprise to anyone who’s ever seen me dance solo
Why haven’t we seen you in the GOGT(Great Ongoing Guitar Thread) yet??
My parents were antique dealers; I spent many a weekend morning not sleeping in, but getting up at 6am to cruise garage sales, flea markets and antique shows.
It can be pretty funny when I, a middle-aged suburban white guy, starting telling someone about British Hallmarked silver, Kewpie Dolls or the old, expensive bisque-headed dolls, or Japanese woodblock prints, etc…you have to end up being kind of your own Antiques Roadshow if you are going to find the bargains out there…
I’ve played guitar and sung rock ‘n’ roll music since my early teens, and classic country music since my early 20s. I’ve surprised more than one person who only knows me through my regular vocation when they’ve accepted my invitation to hear me play in a club.
I display a quite different side of me than the one they’ve known. I’m forced to tell them that what they’ve known of me up to this point is a well-rehearsed, well-maintained act, and that they’re now seeing the real me.
Oh dear - I seem to have found a rift in the space-time continuum to a universe where I stayed in theater.
For me, besides the afore mentioned Scientific literacy and ability to dance (just not club dance), people are generally surprised to learn I fenced in college.
Oh - and I can build bombs. Actually, most people I know are not surprised by that last one.
I am a big baseball fan. A woman who can discuss baseball with any modicum of knowledge is apparently shocking to a lot of men. I have had a number of conversations about baseball with men that were highly condescending. :rolleyes: Hee hee, the girl thinks she knows about sports! How cute.
I’m also a bit nuts for natural history. I love dinosaurs, mammalian megafauna, and of course, my all-time favorite animal, the coelacanth. I’m not an expert, I just enjoy reading books on the topic, I like natural history museums, and I used to be a dinosaur docent at the Field Museum. This was during a period of my life where I was an office monkey for a financial company in Chicago and it was VERY surprising to people, that when when I wasn’t pushing papers around, my hobby was talking to kids about dinosaurs. In real life I’m working on my masters degree in international public policy.
