Draelin, if it’s any consolation, the first time I pumped gas I also overfilled the tank. I would have been fine, except a big rig pulled in and downshifted so loud I couldn’t hear the pump.
I never got the hang of drinking beer without having it foam up and spill down my front.
I can’t tread water. Whaddya mean, it’s like riding a bike?
I can’t curl my hair. My hair is very coarse, but other people have successfully curled it for me.
I can’t blow up a balloon.
TMI warning: I couldn’t use a tampon until after I’d lost my virginity
It reminds me of a temp hired at a time when I was working in a library. We told him to put the books on the shelves, but it quickly became obvious he couldn’t do so. My first thought was that he was illiterate, but actually, he wasn’t. He just didn’t know the alphabetical order. It never had occured to me before that someone could read and write but not know that G comes after D.
As for really illiterate (or barely litterate) people, like in ** TwoTrouts ** example above, it doesn’t surprise me, since I’ve met a number of them.
Same here. I tried again while reading this thread, and, as usual, failed.
I’m amongst the people who didn’t even know there was an alternate way to tie shoes.
I was 15 before I learnt to read a bus timetable. After we missed the bus, my friend had to explain that you look at the time for where you are, not for where you want to be.
I have a problem that east is to the right of me, no matter what. Quite a few times I’ve merged from one freeway to another the wrong direction because I merged right (east!??) when going south.
:eek: I am truly amazed. Now I’ll remember it. See, I never learned those little tricks. We spent several years being taught the metric system, and of course we don’t even use it, so I’ve forgotten it. If we’re invaded by a metric-using country, I’m screwed.
When my daughter was learning the multiplication tables, she came home and showed me a trick for the 9s, that all the answers add up to 9.
2 x 9 = 18 (1 + 8 = 9)
3 x 9 = 27 (2 + 7 = 9)
I was shocked. I never learned that.
Again, me, too. My son can do this and he’s not quite eight.
I have to carry a calculator in my purse. :smack:
I haven’t ever used one myself, but I used to be a cashier. If push came to shove, I think I could figure it out.
I also can’t drive a stick shift or change a tire.
I once had an assignment to give a speech which gave instructions on how to do something, and the only thing I could come up with for a topic was how to change a diaper.
I guess overfilling a tank confuses me…don’t they turn off by themselves when the tank is full? You don’t really have to hear the click, because no more gas will come out. You’d have to conciously make the decision to let go of the handle and start pumping again…of course, if you’ve never pumped before, you might not know that the clicking off of a pump means the tank is full…but then what do you think it would mean? And how would you decide to stop if you didn’t know that’s what the shutting off meant?
Somewhat of a hijack here but, as promised, here’s the third way to tie your shoelaces I learned from my Chinese co-worker:
Cross the laces and bring the right tail underneath the string like you would start a traditional bow.
Grab the right-side tail “underhand” with your middle, ring & pinkie fingers, sweeping your middle finger and thumb towards you, underneath that tail, and making the stretch between your middle finger/thumb taut. The inside of your wrist should be facing towards you.
Grab the left-side tail “overhand” with your middle, ring & pinkie fingers, sweeping your middle finger and thumb away from you, underneath that tail, and making the stretch between your middle finger/thumb taut. The inside of your wrist should be facing towards you. (As you get the hang of this, you really only need your thumb to go under the string at this step.)
Grab the left-side taut piece with the middle finger and thumb of your right hand.
This is the tricky part. While doing step 4, also use the middle finger and thumb of your left hand to grab the right-side taut piece.
Now, bring your left index finger under your left thumb to grab the piece of string there. You’ll have to let the left taut piece slide off your left index finger in order to get your left index finger underneath your left thumb to grab that piece of string there . Now you should be pinching a piece of string between both thumb/index fingers.
Pull in opposite directions and, if you’ve got it right, you’ll have a bow.
I never learned that either. What I did learn was that when you look at both your hands palms down you put the finger down that corresponds to the number you are multiplying by nine (counting from the left). Any fingers before the one you put down are in the ten place, any fingers after are in the one place.
So if you put your fourth finger down (4 x 9) you have 3 fingers on one side and 6 on the other… 36. Put the seventh finger down (7 x 9) you have 6 in the ten spot, 3 in the one spot… 63.
Even today I do this when I can’t think of the answer without help.
Mr. S grew up working on a farm and built most of our house with his own two hands, but a few days ago I had to show him how to tie a square knot. He’s 48 years old.
I doubt that I could make any kind of knot, except for the one where you tie your shoes. I never have needed to. I once knew a mechanic who couldn’t set points. Of course, cars haven’t had points since the early seventies, but you’d think it would be covered in techincal school. I didn’t learn to shuffle cards until I was sixteen, and I still am not very good at it. I usually end up giving the cards a permanent bend.
I don’t think it has been mentioned here already, but I run into cashiers frequently who cannot count out change properly. They can only “count forward” to the change amount shown on their cash registers, which is why they hand you your receipt, your bills and then your coins on top in an unmanageable handful that is impossible to put in your wallet with any kind of grace. This drives me crazy. BTW, these are not immigrants but people who have lived here all their lives.
Think of Bus service as a network and if you live in a major metro area in the east , you will most likely have a subway or LRT system , which could be called the backbone
So now the buses are packets , and your a byte in the greater scheme of things ,and now you need to get from your place to X place , so you need a router, which in this case would be a bus terminal.
Upon entry to the bus , they normally will have route maps of all buses in the metro area , the terminal it goes to , plus the average time of bus service , in Toronto on major routes , it was roughly bout twenty minutes in optimimum weather.
[aside]In febuary , bone chilling weather , it was more like an hour tween buses ,at least on Finch west[/aside]
All you need is the closest point of bus service,and your end destination , and you can generally map the how to’s without really needing to question any staff , but you would be advised to do so , as they live to help people.
Chances are you can even do it , from the internet.
Buses are useful , but dont ever have to depend on them ,as they have limitations , the difference between mass transit for all, and custom tailored vehicle for one.
The other day I was walking back to my car in the parking lot of an outdoor shopping center-type place. There was an older genleman (probably 70ish) standing there who pointed across the parking lot to the Long John Silver’s and asked me “What kind of food do they have there?”
ME: Fish, but it’s fast-food fish so it’s deep fried and really greasy.
HIM: What do you mean by fast-food fish?
ME: It’s not like Red Lobster where your waiter brings it out to you. It’s cheap fish that’s deep fried.
HIM: You mean it’s a restaurant but they don’t have waiters?
ME: It’s fast food.
HIM: What does that mean?
I was talking to a person who had no idea what “fast food” means. And FTR, his car had Illinois plates and he didn’t have a foreign accent, so I doubt that he was some third-world tourist who was ignorant of the complexities of American food.
Also - when I was 16 and working at McDonald’s, a man and his teenage son, both dressed in dirty overalls, came in and sat down at a booth. They sat there for about 15 minutes before the son yelled “Can we get some service here?” Apparently down on the farm they’d never heard of McDonald’s, or that you have to go to the counter and order the food yourself.
No, seriously, I’ve only ever used the metric system, so when I see people discussing gas prices by the gallon, my brain goes blank. A liter I understand. A gallon confuses me. Don’t get me started on yards and pints and quarts!
I can’t move to the States - I think my brain would explode from the conversion efforts.
So what can’t I do…
I can only whistle inwards, and I’m happy to have discovered I’m not alone in my plight.
I can’t style my hair. Everyone else seems to be able to straighten hair, curl hair, make french braids and twists and lovely twirly updos using sparkly clips. On their own heads!! I can’t figure out how they do it without 3 extra arms attached somewhere.
I have a very hard time doing math in my head. I don’t need a calculator, but I absolutely need a sheet of paper and a pencil, or it takes me forever to figure out a simple problem.
My mind often blanks on alphabetical order. I know that H is after F, but I’ll run through the start of the alphabet in my head to be sure. (see, I just did it now to check if I was making a mistake in my example!)
My cousin dated a guy that she claimed had not mastered the simple act of wiping. She dumped him on St. Patrick’s Day when she discovered the sexy boxer shorts she gave him as a Valentine’s Day gift already had skid marks. She said peeked in his underwear drawer and found skiddies in about 90% of his briefs and about 60% of his boxers. :eek:
I know a guy who has lived in New York almost his entire life and he and I went to a kosher restaurant. He orders cheeseburger and milk shake. The waiter tells him it’s a kosher restaurant and that you can’t mix those things. He had heard the term kosher and knew how to use it figuratively, but was perfectly unaware of the existence of Jewish dietary laws. This guy is nearly 50.
Hey now, being from places without a kosher restauraunt on every corner, when I hear “kosher” I think “not pork” and “not the ass end of the animal” and “something with the ovens” and “Coke with sugar for Passover, mmm”, I don’t think “no meat + dairy”. In other words, kosher to a great many people is the kind of kosher you get at the grocery store, not the kind of kosher you would get at a restaurant. I might make the same mistake in a New York kosher establishment despite being pretty much aware of what “kosher” means because that aspect dosen’t come up in other places.
