# I'm surprised EVERYONE can't... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 24, 2019, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231 "2019-10-24T12:40:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/121 "2019-10-27T21:16:09Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I will never forget the story I read about a woman who wanted two dogs to mate and have a litter of puppies. She… lit candles and played romantic music in her living room for them, and was baffled that it seemed to have no effect. You’ve probably also heard about the woman who complained to the local DNR office wanting them to move the “Deer Crossing” sign further down the road. She did not want the deer crossing so close to her home. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/122 "2019-10-27T21:20:36Z")
The ability to plan. I mean, everyone messes up due to not thinking of something occasionally, but I’ve known far too many people who when, say, they have £300 left until the end of the month and a bill for £200 due before then, will happily spend £300 on frivolous stuff (normally because ‘it’s on sale’), then panic because they don’t have enough to pay the bill. Or will go shopping, then come home and immediately use the last of some essential that then requires another shopping trip to replace. I will say, round here, few people really use compass points for directions, aside from a very basic ‘I live north of town’ or ‘take the M6 south’ sort of way. Have a look a google maps for any UK town (aside from Milton Keynes) and you’ll see why. Our towns just sort of happened, all the roads but a few motorways wiggle all over the place. They’ll have a bit going due south, then gradually bend east, have a sudden right-angle, twist due north for a bit then meander back over south-ish. Add in the fact that you’re not seeing the sun for much of the year, and if you’re still totally confident which way you’re heading you’re either using a compass or sneakily using that hill in the distance as a marker anyway, so just admit it. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/123 "2019-10-27T21:33:26Z")
> [@lingyi](#): > > Swim - I’ve lived in Hawaii almost all my life and people are amazed I’ve never learned to swim. “What would you do if the islands sank?” “Drown just like you unless you can swim over 2000 miles to the next land mass!” But Johnston Atoll is only 536 miles away. Easy peasy. Plus there’s no inhabitants so you won’t have to fight anyone who wants to keep you off of it. Just repel the thousands of others who also manage to swim there. Resources are limited. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/124 "2019-10-28T00:50:04Z")
Tying a couple of different knots, say, reef, clove hitch, bowline, figure 8, timber hitch, surgeon’s knot. Knot to mention 🆒 tie knots: bare minimum of 4 in hand, Windsor, half Windsor. It takes me days to learn a knot, but then it sticks. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/125 "2019-10-28T15:38:36Z")
> [@saje](#): > > What boggles my mind are people who think that animals reason the way we do. OMG, this just happened a few days ago. I bring our African Grey, Rocco to work with me everyday along with our dogs. Rocco doesn’t talk when people are around, but as soon as I leave the room he starts jabbering, “be good, Loki”, “wanna grape?”, “DELICIOUSSSS”, etc. A very nice woman who works for me but is not the brightest, loves Rocco and comes back several times a day to see him and always says, “hello, Rocco” enunciating each word very carefully. I overheard someone ask her what she expects Rocco to say, and she answered, “hello, Kori (her name)”! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/126 "2019-10-28T15:51:01Z")
Learn that sometime shutting up and walking away is better than trying to prove you are righ. “You got to know when to hold them Know when to fold them. Know when to walk away and know when to run.” If everyone could learn this, we’d need a lot fewer prisons. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/127 "2019-10-28T16:17:15Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Today the Ukulele Lady asked for seared pork chops with shiitake mushrooms and a mustard vinaigrette, steamed broccoli with lemon and oil, and baked butternut squash. At 7 PM. I had it all on the table at 7 PM. Happy wife, happy life. Were you traveling across a time zone while cooking? Did it take you exactly 24 hours to make it? Or did you already cook that, and she just happened to ask you for a specific meal which you had just placed on the table? I’m really not sure which of these you did. I’m surprised everyone can’t… roll their R’s. When my kids were little, my older son asked me how to do that, so I made the sound and told him you just do it. What’s the problem with that? Then my wife informed me that she can’t do it either. I said “you just say ‘dddddd’” (or however you transcribe the sound). My wife and son made some pathetic sound like “luh luh luh luh luh.” My wife grew up in El Paso. She took Spanish as a foreign language. And when they played guns as kids, how did they make the machine gun sound? My mind was boggled. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/128 "2019-10-28T16:47:47Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > That must have been a helluva shock. You show up with one good magazine and burn through it in about three hours, and then you’ve still got 11 hours to kill… Honestly I once had that experience on a flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco, even though I was well aware it would take about 11 hours. I watched a movie, ate dinner, took a nap, woke up and looked at the moving map, and was like “Damn, there’s _still_ 7 hours left.” ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/129 "2019-10-28T17:23:37Z")
“Lefty loosey” doesn’t do much for me - My wife tells me to look left, it’s not entirely 50% which way I look, but it’s at least 25% I look the wrong way. “Left” and “Right” are fairly arbitrary, and not well integrated into my consciousness. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/130 "2019-10-28T17:31:48Z")
Instead of “lefty loosey / righty tighty”, I learned the “right hand rule” for turning screws. You point the thumb of your right hand in the direction you want the screw to go, and the other fingers will curl in the direction you need to rotate it to make it go that way. This nice thing is that this works no matter what direction you’re looking at the screw from. But I guess it doesn’t work if you can’t remember which hand is your right hand. ---
**Author:** ![fjs1fs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9e8a1a/32.png) [@fjs1fs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fjs1fs)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/131 "2019-10-28T17:33:33Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > That’s…weird. That’s not even a matter of not being able to estimate durations; you don’t have to do that, because the ticket has that information printed on it. > > That’s more like “doesn’t know how to read the manual.” I think I get it: 14 hour flight + 14 hour time zone change = 28 hours or “net” of +4 hours. So if flight left at 6am it would arrive at 10am. I mean I think I “get” the original passenger’s confusion, just not realizing that it’s the next day. I see this was covered way upthread. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/132 "2019-10-28T19:07:11Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I have since integrated an Amazon FireStick into the monster. That worked the first time too. But I’d love to give either of you the challenge of assembling that thing on you own to see how you’d do. Figuring out where to plug in the wires is easy, it’s actually plugging them in that’s difficult. Moving furniture, mirrors, flashlights, and contortions to reach the connectors is hard. Finally getting one cable connected and then realizing it’s in the wrong socket because you’re doing it all by feel is a time waster. Running the speaker wire unobtrusively is very tedious. If it were all sitting on the kitchen table, connecting that setup would take about fifteen minutes. Maybe even less if the wires are nicely coiled, and not all tangled together. It would also then be completely useless to you there. Two hours seems about right to get it all connected in place. More time when the existing speaker wires aren’t long enough for the new room, and yet another run to the store is required. Then you have to find a power strip because there aren’t enough outlets. Then you have to find _another_ power strip because the power supply for the new Firestick covers two sockets in the old power strip… ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/133 "2019-10-28T19:08:01Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > Instead of “lefty loosey / righty tighty”, I learned the “right hand rule” for turning screws. You point the thumb of your right hand in the direction you want the screw to go, and the other fingers will curl in the direction you need to rotate it to make it go that way. This nice thing is that this works no matter what direction you’re looking at the screw from. But I guess it doesn’t work if you can’t remember which hand is your right hand. That is also used to show how a magnetic field will develop around a conductor carrying current. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/134 "2019-10-28T19:14:12Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > “Lefty loosey” doesn’t do much for me - My wife tells me to look left, it’s not entirely 50% which way I look, but it’s at least 25% I look the wrong way. “Left” and “Right” are fairly arbitrary, and not well integrated into my consciousness. A woman I know cannot tell left from right. If you tell her to turn left, she methodically raises both hands up, palms facing away. The left hand forms an “L” with her fingers/thumb, so that’s left. The first time I was a passenger in her car I thought she was messing around with me. Each turn I told her to make she would very deliberately go through her “trick”. ---
**Author:** ![C3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/c3/32/3108_2.png) [@C3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/135 "2019-10-28T19:23:46Z")
I have a friend who was in her mid-30s before she learned how to ride a bike. She got her husband to teach her when the kids started nagging her to go on family rides with them. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/136 "2019-10-28T19:26:39Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > A woman I know cannot tell left from right. If you tell her to turn left, she methodically raises both hands up, palms facing away. The left hand forms an “L” with her fingers/thumb, so that’s left. As a child I learned to tell left from right by the pattern of freckles on the backs of my hands. I have no problem telling left from right, but every single time it comes up I look at the back of my hands, even though the reference freckles are decades gone. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/137 "2019-10-28T19:43:07Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Spell. I am a voracious reader so I’m very good when it comes to spelling. Probably not last-round-spelling-bee good, but spelling errors leap off the page to me. > > I’ve run across people who can’t seem to figure out that that June is the sixth month, July is the seventh month, etc. They have to do that knuckle-counting thing. I also know how many days each month has but some people don’t. Friend of mine, pretty smart guy, master auto mechanic, but the order the months of the year come in, stumps him. Never quite learned it. January is the first month, then February, but after that things get a little hazy. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/138 "2019-10-28T19:45:41Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Pretty much this. I’m astounded while reading the comments section in ANY publication on the internet. There are people who seem to be making intelligent comments yet can’t grasp: > > Lose - Loose > Do - Due > There - They’re - Their > Your - You’re > Than - Then > Whole - Hole > Poll - Pole > Roll - Role > > I’m sure there are many more. And don’t get me started on punctuation, especially apostrophes. Obviously these people went to school. So what the hell is wrong with them? To - too ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/139 "2019-10-28T22:18:21Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Figuring out where to plug in the wires is easy, it’s actually plugging them in that’s difficult. Moving furniture, mirrors, flashlights, and contortions to reach the connectors is hard. Finally getting one cable connected and then realizing it’s in the wrong socket because you’re doing it all by feel is a time waster. Running the speaker wire unobtrusively is very tedious. That is why, when I set up my current living room, I made sure the “entertainment center” was far enough from the wall that I could physically get myself behind it to hook it up, make adjustments, clean, etc. No mirrors or contortions required at my house. Still sometimes need a flashlight. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2019, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231/140 "2019-10-29T12:56:43Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > That is why, when I set up my current living room, I made sure the “entertainment center” was far enough from the wall that I could physically get myself behind it to hook it up, make adjustments, clean, etc. No mirrors or contortions required at my house. Still sometimes need a flashlight. Very good. Plant’s law says that each outlet or network connection will have a large piece of furniture in front of it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-surprised-everyone-cant/842231.md?page=8)