As many of you know, I enjoy making weekly football predictions and having fun with it.
What you may not know, is that, I seem to have some uncanny luck in making other predictions as well. To wit:
-In 1998, just for the heck of it, I filled out the Pizza Hut March Madness Challenge where you had to pick the winners all the way through the Tournament Bracket. I picked just based on their record and my “favoritism” and probably took a whole 5 minutes to complete it (I’m not real big on College Hoops). By the time they were down to the Elite 8, I was in first place out of over 200,000 entries. I got calls from ESPN (who hosted the contest), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, and a sports radio station in Salt Lake City (I was the only person with a chance to still win it that had picked Utah to win it all). Unfortunately, they lost the title game and I won zilch. But, hey, it was fun while it lasted (and the prize wasn’t anything like it is now, the winner got 64 pizzas and 2 tickets to 1999 Final Four).
-Currently, I am 41st out of over 20,000 on the Doritos Survivor Challenge. Pretty surprising considering I had forgotten my password and couldn’t change my picks for weeks 2 and 3!!
So there’s my hidden talent, it has yet to make me a dime unless you include winning in fantasy football as a prediction skill.
What’s your talent that people may not be aware of? Has it ever paid off?
The only things I can think of are typing and writing. I’m pretty reserved, so I don’t share these talents with anyone. With the writing I plan on not showing anyone until later on when I try and publish short stories and eventually books.
As for the typing, I can type a maximum of 90 words a minute. When I was a freshman in high school I had to take a computer applications/keyboarding class (I could type 90 words a minute then, too. But the class was required). I sat next to people who’s maximum typing speed was about 10 words a minute. Being a freshman, I didn’t want the attention of sophmores because, in the class I was in, they were all jerks. Well, typing 90 words a minute gets you attention. The teacher would signal me out in class (he wasn’t a bad guy, though), and kids would ooh and ahhh over my talent. Once after lunch, I went back to the room to get some work done, and a group of sophmores (a few which were in my class) stood behind me saying, “This is the girl who can type really fast.” And then they would try to get me to type. “Type something! Type anything!” like I was some damn circus freak. I told them no. I probably get this talent from my grandmother who won a typing contest on a typewriter–because she could type really fast on it. Not sure of the speed, though.
ALong with neptune, I, show streaks of being able to type well. I got clocked at about 80 wpm in one of my best showings ever, which I think comes from my mother’s side of the family; she has tested at 120 wpm and one of her aunts won several secretarial and typing awards in her time.
However, most of my hidden talents would more aptly be named “stupid human tricks”. And few dopers have seen them.
I can lightly toss a small ball in the air, bounce it off my inner elbow and catch it again; for some reason, a lot of folks find this act fascinating and are unable to do it themselves.
If you ask me “What band appeared in the cheesy 1965 flick ‘Village of the Giants’ starring Beau Bridges, Tommy Kirk and Ronny Howard?”, I can honestly answer, “the Beau Brummels.”
I’m a pretty good weight guesser, despite a lack of on-the-midway training.
I have a bizarrely accurate memory for song lyrics and book passages. As a child, I used to amaze my mom when, during conversations, I would suddenly sprint upstairs, grab a book I hadn’t read for years, and cite a relevant passage.
And I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.
I can calm a distressed child rather amazingly quickly, especially very young children.
I am good with finding my way back from whence I came.
Without speaking any languages other than English, I can understand heavily-accented speech surprisingly well.
I’ve always had a knack for knowing what people were REALLY saying or wanting.
My sisters say this comes from anal-retentive, nit-picking attention to insignificant detail, but I know they’re really just jealous. And I should know…I have a knack.
I can make a child run away from me pretty easily. I’m not evil, but maybe they sense my slight dislike for them. Even when I try to be nice, they run away. That wasn’t good last semester when I was in my Child Growth and Development Class.
I can do a great Ralph Wiggum quote. My favorite quote to do is, “Go banana!” I can also do Apu, the impression of an impression of Bill Cosby (from the episode where Bleeding Gums Murphy talks about his life and how he was on an episode of the Cosby Show), and Ed Bearse from Ken Burn’s Civil War series. “John Brown, John Brown, John Brown, John Brown…was a very important person in American history.” But then, it’s not that hard to do a Bearse impression when you first hear him.
