Inspired bythis thread: You’ve given up your best, now give us your worst!
I have no sense of direction. I do mean I have a bad sense of direction, a sucky sense of direction. or even a shitty sense of direction. I totally lack to ability to get from here to there if someone tells me how. I have to reply on visual clues, memorizing street names and landmarks. I’ve lived in the same city for over 30 years, and yet I still get totally lost and have to ask strangers for directions.
I blame genetics. No female in my mother’s family has a sense of direction. Obviously, that gene was bred out of our pool centuries ago.
Math. My ACT composite score would have been considerably higher were it not for my bombing so terribly in the math section.
To this day I can barely do simple arithmetic. Seriously. I need pen & paper and a calculator to compute the outcome of a 4d6 + 8 roll in Dungeons & Dragons.
I can’t remember names for shit. I always blame it on my stroke but in my case it was here long before and seems to be genetic; my Dad used to forget MY name. He would start to say something and you could see the deer-in-the-headlights look and running through his brain is “I only have two - I got a 50/50 chance - its a family name I know but - with 11 years apart I should be able to”. And them he would fall back on the old reliable:
“Son – run down to the garage for me and grab -------”
Yeah Dad – right. Good cover!
Now if you want to talk more a skill; I have always wanted to be a good woodworker. Carving gunstocks, making desks, building toys. I don’t totally suck at it but the best I can usually manage is refinishing or maybe making a missing part for something for my own use. Its driven me nuts because I am terrific with metal; I can make and/or forge almost anything. I’ve made car fenders from scratch good enough that people wanted to buy them. I have made flint locks for rifles that are still in use 40 years later. But my woodwork -------- nada. My Dad always claimed it was because I couldn’t melt the wood and start over.
Ball games. I have no grasp of the tactics involved, though I can recognise skill in getting the ball to do what you want it to do. And I have no ability to do anything much with a ball in any sort of game. Whenever the children in the local primary school let their football get over the fence, and I happen to be the passerby they ask to get it back, I’m in a cold sweat.
I have been walking Leet the Wonder Dog[sup]TM[/sup] the same five or six routes for the last seven years, and if I even take a turn one block earlier or later, I am hopelessly confused. And it’s even worse at the dog park - we can wander around for twenty minutes and I still have no idea where the exits are. Fortunately, he is in no hurry and is perfectly OK with criss-crossing the park two or three times before I finally figure out which way is which.
Nor can I remember where I parked the car. If I don’t park in the same slot as the last fifty times, I have to wander the aisles hitting the Unlock button and listen for the plaintive little beep that signals “I’m over here where you left me, you forgetful old person you”.
My handwriting is atrocious, I have no memory for names, and it takes a moment of concentrated thought before I can remember my own cell phone number.
I have an encyclopedic knowledge of things that do me absolutely no good but last Sunday I locked my keys in the car and have no idea what became of the spare. If you want to know who were the participants in the last world heavyweight boxing championship held under London Prize Ring rules (John L. Sullivan knocked out Jake Kilrain in 75 rounds), I’m your man. Where I left my glasses, not so much.
Me either. And hey - faces too. The other week I spent time in the hospital walk-in centre after a minor bike crash. Saw a nurse, had an X-ray, saw another nurse. The second nurse had to explain to me, gently, that actually she was the first nurse. There had been maybe twenty minutes between my two sessions with her, and I had lost her face completely. I’m so bad at this that I’m no longer embarrassed by it - it’s not me being disrespectful, it’s more like a disability.
You can add to that a couple of practical ones. I am officially the world’s worst plasterer - my technique these days is to make a cat’s arse of a wall and then sand it flat. And then there’s anything that involves superglue. Whatever it is, I will end up stuck to it.
Playing the guitar. I have short stubby fingers that don’t bend all that well plus I have arthritis in some joints. I have been taking lessons and can play rhythm parts okay.
I absolutely cannot sing. In my mind, I sound to myself like I’m hitting all the right notes, but to others it comes out as a droning monotone. I’m also completely unable to dance, though oddly enough I’m pretty good at rhythm-based video games like Beat Saber.
I have zero kinetic sense for sports or things of that nature. Never have, never will.
All my gifts look as though they were wrapped by someone with bear paws rather than primate hands with opposable thumbs.
I can’t whistle better than a thin reedy noise that absolutely would not get Lauren Bacall’s attention. She would likely check the windows to see if there was a leaky draft or something.
Can’t remember names. It’s one of the reasons I hate meetings at work. Sure, I see you every month, still can’t remember your name. People think I just don’t care. And they are probably correct.
Good upper body strength, in pretty good shape, and I’ve always done lots of walking, so it’s really not much a matter of muscle tone. I just can’t run very fast at all: never could.
The best I could ever do in the 50 yard dash was low to mid 8s.
Singing, playing music, drawing anything more complex than stick figures. Total fail. I’ve all the musical ability of a blocked nostril, and my artwork resembles the footprints of poultry having a seizure.
Languages. I can learn them through rigorous training but the moment I stop using it they just slip away.
As a near thing on direction. I’m very good at getting places. But place me in a building with multiple exits like a mall or something? I can’t for the life of my figure out where my car is and how to get there. I’m always trying to recall which store I came in at and use the maps to get back. It’s like the two areas exist on entirely separate planes of existence.
While working in the real estate office, I learned to give directions because people often stopped by to get directions. I probably could have learned Hebrew easier, but I did it. I’m so good at giving directions that if anyone calls the store I now work at asking for them, or if anyone in the tore askes how to get somewhere else, the staff calls on me.
But following someone else’s directions? Forget it.
