What are some things that you can do and take for granted, that it sorta surprises you when you encounter someone who can’t. I was inspired to start this the other day when a college educated adult asked me how to spell “bother.” I’m no spelling bee champ material, but I’m a pretty good speller. Many people who know me will ask me how to spell various words. I don’t know why, I can just envision the words really easily, or figure out how I’m pretty sure they are spelt.
Another one is swimming. Yeah, I know my mom forced us to swimming lessons as a kid, and I can understand how other people might not have had ready access to a pool or lake when young. But it still sorta surprises me when I encounter an adult who says they can’t swim.
Figuring out mechanical things. To me it’s obvious that when you move this, that is supposed to happen, which leads to the other thing, so when it’s not working the way it’s supposed to, it’s usually pretty easy to find the problem. And with the magic of the Intrarwebz, you can look up almost anything and figure out how to fix it.
Heck, even way back when we had books and manuals, I solved the mystery of why the radiators on the second floor were always cold, even tho the boiler was running. I looked in a book and found out there was probably air in the plumbing from the boiler to the radiators. That’s when I realized what the little gizmo was for - it opened a valve on the radiators so you could bleed the air out. In a matter of maybe 30 minutes, the house was suddenly warm! And I now knew how the heating in that house worked! Saved myself a service call and everything!
This weekend, I was visiting my mom, and my sister asked if I could turn up the temp on the water heater. Honestly, I was perplexed that she couldn’t manage even that simple a task. But I guess that’s my not-so-superpower…
Reasonably estimate how long relatively mundane things will take – trips, tasks, commutes, events, etc. I’m continually amazed at how rare this skill appears to be, when it seems so instinctive for me. I know to take account of time for walking, for the things that are likely to go wrong (i.e. the train/bus is 5 minutes later than expected), the wait for the elevator, etc, which most folks seem to forget.
Read the manual. I’m really happy when you consider me a genius for fixing your computer/washing machine/lawnmower/anything else with a manual, but all I did was look at the manual. You don’t have problems big enough to make me think about them.
Last night, I hit a drive through for a quick cup o’ caffeine. The total comes to $1.07. I pull up to the window and wanting to offload some pennies (the tribbles of the coin world) hand the cashier a dollar bill, a dime and two pennies. With hope, I expect to get a nickel in return. This is not the kind of math problem that should stump a person capable of dressing themselves and who has access to a dedicated computing device designed for the specific purpose helping the person manage transactions. Ninety seconds and three cashiers later, Moe Larry and Curly give me a dime in change.
I’ll agree about the swimming thing. I was lucky enough to live down the street from a public swimming pond, but I also got swimming lessons at the pool at the local YMCA, and before I could graduate from my undergraduate college, I had to pass (as everyone did) a swimming test. A lot of schools, I understand, have these now. (Actually, I passed it the first week I was there. I had to pass in order to take the Small boats Physical Education course I’d elected.) In many locations in the US, it’s very easy to learn to swim. You don’t have to be well-off or have access to a resort.
Calculate time zones. This simple act seems to befuddle many people including simple ones like Central to Eastern.
I’m also pretty good at being able to estimate the time anywhere in the world, but I can understand that many people never grew up curious about the world or worked a job which required that knowledge.
Transport things in a car. People are always surprised when I tell them I could get four people and their luggage to the airport in my little car or get a dining room table home. Nope. It’s really simple. Put the big stuff in first. Put the smaller stuff on top. Start from the back corner and work toward the front. No, you don’t need a Ford Super-Duty Excursion Extended XL Edition with optional luggage rack and tow hitch cargo rack to do this.
Okay, so I have an eidetic memory and simple math is a breeze for me. But shouldn’t everyone know how to divide a number by two in their head?
Two young ladies wanted to split the total in half, and I gave them the amount while one of them was pulling out her device. If I had turned purple and puked on the counter, they could not have been more surprised.
ETA: Doing change in my head. Can’t everyone figure out the change from a dollar for the cents and the change from the amount on the bill minus a dollar (i.e. 19 for a 20) and get the right amout?
Use or understand the phonetic alphabet. I’d have thought by osmosis everybody, even if they’ve never learned it would have picked up enough to understand the “real” NATO version, but what gets me is those who can’t comprehend the fact that I can’t tell the difference between “Bee” and “Pee” for example with your accent or lazy speech. They won’t understand B for Bravo or P for Papa, just keep repeating “Bee” or “Pee”, then eventually they’ll use something like P for Peter whilst somebody else will use B for Beta, not helpful.
Two that continually surprise me as a college professor:
Estimate your grade in a course when you know what grades you received on all of the assignments and how those assignments are weighted. Sometimes students profess to be confused about what their current grade is early in the semester, when we have had exactly ONE graded assignment. Where exactly do they think grades come from
Read cursive. I can understand not knowing how to WRITE it if you were never taught. But reading it seems like the sort of thing most people should be able to pick up through osmosis and a minimal amount of exposure, the same way people can read texts in different fonts.
My mother has beautiful penmanship, instilled in her by strict nuns over many years. Her letter forms are stunning but they are also completely non-standard. I can’t read any of it. My penmanship is atrocious and I don’t even remember the standard letter forms. I assure you that you can’t read my cursive either.
I had a passenger sitting in the seat next to me when flying from Houston to Tokyo, a few years ago. He had apparently never flown cross-Pacific before and was stunned when I informed him that the flight would not take merely 4 hours, as he had thought, but 12+ hours.
I used to think that when people say they “can’t swim,” they merely meant they had never taken swimming instruction or can’t swim well, but that in an emergency, they’d still instinctively swim in some way that came naturally. But then I read an anecdote where some teenaged girl said she couldn’t swim, and several people laughingly pushed her into a swimming pool (some sort of high school party, I think)…and she sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. A couple seconds later, people dashed into the pool in panicked realization as to what she really meant and fished her out.
Just drive. Behind the wheel is very much NOT the appropriate time and place to do anything else BESIDES drive. Somehow I’m the only person seemingly anywhere that doesn’t assume I’m so good at driving that it’s just an ancillary activity while I do something else I consider more important, like texting or playing Candy Crush or reading the newspaper. Seriously, I’ve seen people actually reading a fucking newspaper while driving, and not even while sitting in traffic, I mean like on the highway at speed.
Most of the engineers I work with perform new projects without doing any research whatsoever. They just feel around in the dark, so to speak. They don’t do any Google research on the subject because their search skills are extremely poor. They have no idea how to use parenthesis or choose the right search terms.
