Second multitasking. I’m incredibly good at concentrating on a problem (e.g., fixing a computer, finding the best flight to another city, writing a report, etc.) but I have to be left to it to the exclusion of everything else. My wife is used to me literally waving her off with one hand when I’m engaged in doing something that requires my attention. While I’m completing a task, it needs to get 100% of my attention.
Handling chopsticks.
Swimming.
Cycling, specifically turning and stopping.
Any exercise, for that matter.
Making salads.
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Yes, I certainly do.
Singing. My mother used to say she couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. I couldn’t carry one on the flight deck of the Nimitz.
Mechanical devices. I’ve had people practically ROTFL watching me try to use a screwdriver.
Baseball, football, &c. I find them all to be very boring, so I’ve never bothered to develop any skill at them.
I have the same problem, regrettably. I’m no good at golf, but I enjoy playing it anyway. I’ve got maybe $8 tied up in clubs (from Goodwill), a ballcap with a brain pattern on it, and a bright red Hawaiian shirt. And longpants because I do spend some time in the weeds looking for balls. I am the Johnny Rotten of the links–I play by my own rules and focus on the simple joy of swinging a metal stick…that occasionally smacks a white ball into another dimension. And then there’s the sporty golf carts, and the wandering beer lady with the icy Fosters oil cans. What’s not to love about golf?
Assuming you all use English as your primary language at home, how exactly does the ability to roll Rs come up? Do your siblings and children routinely go about saying things like “RRRRichard gave RRRRRobert a rrrap in the rrrribs for rrrroasting the rrrrrabbit so rrrare”?
Creative writing or anything related to it.
The New Yorker’s weekly cartoon caption contests mock me with every issue. As somebody who is incapable of even beginning to come up with a clever caption, is not how I want to think of myself, yet it’s the truth.
Curiously, I almost always think one of the other two finalists is funnier than the one that was actually chosen. See that? Those who can’t do, criticize.
Like Beckdawreck above, memory issues. I date these from a fairly bad head injury many years ago (complete unconsciousness, etc.). It’s not like the Memento guy, but lots of problems with short term memory, and a bizarrely limited sense of smell*. I cope by constantly having a pen and notebook with me. FWIW: I’m sitting near a 2-foot high stack of old notebooks that goes back several years.
Ball sports. I am unusually bad at throwing or catching balls. I do a little better with Frisbees for some reason, but everything else is awful.
*Anything subtle is undetectable, and it often “gifts” me with strong phantom smells that aren’t really there. I’ve gotten used to it over the years.
The guy leading the crew doing a fix up and paint job on our house last year had a first name starting with a rolled “r”. He definitely appreciated that I noticed and properly pronounced his name. It might have been the reason he didn’t charge extra for extra work.
It’s a nice little skill to have when dealing with people from various backgrounds.
That’s why it’s so frustrating that I can’t get it right. There’s NO REASON this should escape me the way it does. Like I can accept that I’m not good at some (or lots of) things that either take inherent talent that I don’t have or require extensive practice which I haven’t done, but this just irks me. It isn’t even that I have this deep desire to crochet (although I would like to make blankets). I mean, I can knit, but I haven’t done it in years because I don’t have the patience and didn’t really enjoy it that much. Really, If I could get it, I would probably crochet like… a potholder and a scarf and then be done crocheting forever, but at least I’d have some peace and be able to lay the whole problem to rest.
Job searching. I absolutely suck at it. I assume it must be hereditary. My dad worked for the same employer for nearly 40 years, and my brother and sister and I have all been with our employers for over 20. For me anyway, a large part of it is that no matter how much my job sucks, it’s better than having to look for a new one.
I don’t have an ounce of creativity.
I guess I have no finger dexterity or something because I can’t braid hair or crochet or knit.
Anything artistic it right out. Creating music, poetry, whatever. I can’t even read poetry, my eyes just skip right over it like ice when reading a book.
On the other hand, I’m pretty much a machine with it comes to duplicating techniques. In high school band I was first chair based on technique. But when the director asked me to improvise a jazz solo, that was the worst thing you could ever hope to hear.
I suck at remembering names. I remember faces, personalities, quirks, sometimes even what they were wearing when I met them, where I first met them … basically everything but their names. Worst moment demonstrating just how bad I am at this: I had been dating and <ahem> other stuff with a very nice girl for about 3 weeks. I ran into a friend of mine and was socially obligated to introduce the two of them. Blanked on her name for an inappropriately long period of time before she whacked me in the back of the head and introduced herself.
That was over 20 years ago. I dated her medium-long distance for a grand total of maybe 5 months. I still remember where we were when we met, what she was wearing, what her friend looked like, who I was with, where the fucking club was (which is now undoubtedly no longer in existence). And yeah now I remember her name, but that probably has more to do with that incident than anything else.
I will remember the faces, etc. of people I just talk to once or twice in passing for an absurdly long period, years in some cases. I recognize strangers’ faces I glimpsed in a crowd if I see them again within an hour or two, without conscious effort on my part. Given where I live right now (near Tokyo), that verges on a superpower.
Names? Fuck no. I remember the family names of maybe 20 of the 100 or so people I work with, many of whom I see every single day. (Almost no one uses given/first names, so there’s not a chance in hell I’d remember those.) I screw up my own kids’ names half the time. (But then again everyone’s parents seem to go down a mental list, throwing out the first syllable of every wrong kid before they hit the right one, so at least I’m not alone in my incompetence there.)
I’m similarly useless for remembering dates, schedules, and routine tasks. If I didn’t eventually figure out that I need to write absolutely everything down and religiously capture it in a task manager, reminder list, or calendar, I would have been fired from every job I’ve ever had for gross negligence and chronic lateness. I’d never finish anything on time or ever be where I’m supposed to be without an out-brain system for that kind of information. A teacher in middle school once told me and my parents at our parent-teacher conference that I’d probably be capable of studying for a PhD, but I’d better get a secretary first; I’d flunk out of a community college without better organization than I’d demonstrated to that point. (You were absolutely right, Mrs. T!)
I have to check my schedule to remember what bloody room I’m supposed to go to at what time, for meetings that happen every week. While I have absolutely no problem navigating anywhere I’ve been to even once, and in many cases all I have to do is catch a glimpse of it on a map with one point of reference to find it the first time, I am completely incapable of remembering which of the thousands of mentally-stored locations I’m supposed to go to in 15 minutes, even though I’ve been there literally 100 times.
Considering how competent my brain is at literally every other aspect of memory, it feels like someone was minmaxing when they were rolling my character and took penalties in certain areas to get bonuses in others.
“Okay, you can add +2 to intelligence, class memory, and pathfinding, but take -4 to remembering names, dates, and routines. You’ll be theoretically capable of casting high-order spells, but you’ll never know whether you brought any of the components without using a checklist to confirm, and you’ll need to consult a calendar and a timepiece every single time if there’s a time component or risk blowing yourself up with backlash from a simple fireball spell. Good luck with that.”
Handwriting. I was terrible at it in school, and I still am.
I’ve also never once in my life successfully snapped my fingers.
As well for me. All through high school ( when one had towrite in cursive ), mine always looked like a third-grader’s. I plateaued early.
Diagnosed with dyscalculia in high school.
I don’t speak math.
I’d love to be able to draw or paint but I simply do not possess the required fine motor skills. When the family got together to make a quilt for our parents’ 46[sup]th[/sup] anniversary, my part was an abstract panel.
Oh, yeah…I forgot that I suck at art. Remember the first lesson in art class? “You can balance a smaller, more interesting object, against a larger, less interesting object.” My response was, “Why don’t you just use two medium objects so it’s symmetrical?”
engineer?