Incredibly simple tasks (seemingly) everyone but you can do

I’ve never quite got the hang of rolling up my shirt sleeves. They either constantly fall down or are tight enough to be cutting off some circulation to my forearms.

When I shared an apartment, my flatmate had a lot of difficulty putting the microwave dish thing back in (you know: the glass plate with notches underneath, and the plastic ring with wheels). Several times I’d watch him in disbelief until it stopped being funny and I’d just do it for him.

Yeah, I have trouble with the microwave carousel, too. So much trouble, in fact, that I hate taking it out to clean it. I can never get the glass dish centered.

Believe it or not I recently saw a guide explaining how to do it: The Art of Manliness: How to Roll Up Your Shirt Sleeves. Who knew there are different ways to do it?

I’ve never been able to blow up a balloon unassisted or properly whistle. I blame my lungs.

Picture if you will:

The scene :
a university professor’s office in the 1970’s.
a small seminar with 5 students sitting around his desk twice a week for 90 minutes.
one student becomes hospitalized , and asks us to record the sessions on tape.

The Equipment:
A standard cassette tape recorder with built-in microphone.
A standard cassette tape, 90 minutes long.

The professor was totally incapable of using the cassette recorder. He asked someone else to turn it on. He became flustered when, as cassette clicked off after 45 minutes, someone removed it, turned it over and re-inserted it. He repeatedly asked someone to rewind the tape and continue recording again from the beginning— and he could not be made to understand why that might not be such a good idea…

I can’t deal with anything hot.

I remember one day my (ex) wife asked me to grab something out of the microwave for her (she had her hands full). so I gave it a try… “Ouch! that’s too hot”… I then started to look around the kitchen for a towel so I could grab the thing out of the microwave. As I was doing that, my then wife gets annoyed with me and just grabs it out of the microwave herself. With her bare hands!
I also don’t get how people can grab tortillas straight off the hot plate or griddle with out the use of tongs.

Actually I started a thread on the topic of how people can do that…so I guess it’s another ability I don’t have.

The kind of people who can grab something hot are often the same ones who can immediately start drinking a just-boiled tea or coffee! Even the tiniest sip would leave my tongue sore for the rest of the day.

I can’t fold shirts with the collar centered. I’ve finally given up, and i start by folding my shirts in half laterally.

I’m with Encinitas, I simply cannot whistle. Been trying my whole life, been afforded a lot of instruction, all to no avail. No can, no how!

I can’t tie knots.

I can whistle, but I can’t snap my fingers. I can do the motion but there’s virtually no sound.

I can blow up a balloon but struggle to tie it off.

It’s not incredibly simple but I may be literally the world’s worst angler. Children barely out of toddler age with no experience and no bait or lures, just a hook have a better success rate than me. I think I’ve only caught one fish heavier than 5 lb. Net casting is several orders of magnitude more productive for me.

I can’t open hotel room doors with the swipe card. I always have to go back down to the desk and have somebody show me how. I also have to ask somebody in the men’s room how to make the water come out of the faucet. But I don’t think I’m the only one baffled by that one, sometimes I have to ask two people.

Same here. But I can’t do that piercing whistle that involves putting my fingers in my mouth.

Can’t do that one either. I managed to get a sound out a couple of times from many attempts, just gave up because I never got anywhere. I’m surprised how well I do at regular whistling, even managing recognizable tunes, totally out of line with my lack of musical ability otherwise.

I can’t throw a frisbee. To be fair, I’ve never owned a dog.

This is what I was going to say. I’m guessing this is hereditary because my mother and siblings can’t snap their fingers either.

I can’t remember what the book was, but at some point as a teen I read a fantasy novel where there was a minor but useful magic spell (maybe making the lights come on?) set up to activate when you snapped your fingers. The main character had to sheepishly admit that she’d never been able to snap her fingers, despite people’s best efforts to teach her. This made me happy because I’d never heard of anyone outside my family who couldn’t snap their fingers!

I cant blow a bubble with bubblegum.

Apparently, I can’t make decent coffee. Or so people who are far more discriminating than I in their taste for coffee tell me. I don’t see what I’m doing that’s any different from how they’re doing it. And to me, all coffee tastes vile until you put enough stuff in it, and mine equivalently vile. But apparently, my coffee sucks. Every time I work in a new office, I warn them they don’t want me making the coffee, and they laugh it off, thinking I’m making some sort of feminist statement or something. Nobody asks me to make the coffee a second time. :smiley:

I can’t either.