I can’t draw, I can’t write advertising copy and though I can read a map and plot a route on a table, once I’m moving in a car I have to turn the map in the direction that the car is heading or I can’t figure it out. By that time, we’ve missed the turn.
Oh and lately? I can’t hear, see, or remember much.
What?
I can’t do math. College Algebra was torture, sheer torture. I can write, so throwing letters into numbers didn’t make a darn bit of sense. I finally passed the fourth round with a mercy grade of “C” from the professor, who at least rewarded me for my determination of showing for every single class, asking questions and handing in every single slip of homework (even though it was all wrong). (I suspect he just couldn’t handle seeing me sob through another test.) I have, however, developed a special talent in working with a calculator. I do no math without a calculator–ever, not even if I have enough fingers available.
I can’t sing to save my life. It doesn’t stop me from belting out a tune with the radio (and sometimes without if I’m feeling especially chipper). It must be hereditary, since none of my kids can carry a tune either. Long car rides with us, while enthuastic, can be rough on the ears.
I’m pretty much a clutz–I fall UP stairs–so it doesn’t come as a big suprise to me that I have absolutely no rhythm for dancing. I watch people who are great dancers with envy, but realize, like a size 4 dress, it just ain’t for me.
I can’t throw a frisbee.
Really. I can’t. It just curves to the right and crashes into the ground. If I played frisbee at a beach, I could injure someone. And I am pretty good when it comes to sports. This thing just is too tough for me.
And I may be a bad singer/dancer as well, but I don’t let that stop me! At least I have fun.
Such a long list, so little time…
I can crochet and tat, but cannot knit.
I wish to the heavens I had musical talent. I took piano lessons for years, guitar lessons (and hours of practice at night, quietly, in the kitchen so I wouldn’t torture anyone). If I really, really tried, I think I could become mediocre. OTOH, one of my daughters picked up playing the guitar in about a week, and could not understand why the chord relationships were a mystery to me. The other daughter has excellent tone recognition, and was selected as part of an early grammar school group to learn the violin. When I was trying to tune the guitar, and couldn’t figure out what was wrong, she would listen for one second and tell me the exact adjustment to make.
Housecleaning – I might be able to become reasonable at that, but I’ve never really tried that hard. All the same, after I’ve spent 2 hours on a room, my husband or older daughter can spend 10 minutes doing something, and it looks better.
Number sequences are hard for me to remember. Ordinary arithmetic is hard, but not mathematical concepts. My younger daughter, OTOH, used to pick up the discarded take-a-number tickets at the deli counter and add them up in her head for fun. When she was five.
I can’t play sports in any way, shape or form, including walking.
I can’t play brass instruments. This has always bothered me for some reason.
I can’t write in a straight line.
I have no short-term memory. Zero. So I can’t remember anything, ever.
I can’t stay out in the cold for any period of time.
I can’t eat pasta without dropping a piece on the white tablecloth.
I can’t see my hand in front of my face without my contacts.
I can’t breakdance.
I can’t knit.
I can’t hang draperies or pictures and not have them come out crooked.
Some of these things I have no use for, but some of them would come in quite handy were I capable of doing them.
I can’t do math in my head. Once in a while, it comes to me easily, but not very often.
I can’t dance. Well, yeah, in the “shuffle your feet and move to the music” kind of way, but not anything that would wow you.
I am not a naturally good driver. I have to really work at being careful, paying attention, and judging angles and distances.
I can’t draw very well. I can do perspective, I can do some shading, I can copy some things, but will never be able to do any real creative drawing.
I can’t write. Yes, I can write, but not creatively. I haven’t the stick-to-it-iveness to actually work through my ideas.
I have no natural housekeeping ability. It takes serious effort on my part to even see what needs to be done, other than the obvious dishes, vacuuming, etc.
I so hear you on the oil painting. I’m good at pencil drawing, or sometimes in ink, but my “painting” tends to come out looking like “coloring”. Still, about a third of the time I manage to come up with a painting I’m reasonably happy with.
Tanookie, I told you I’d teach you how. You just have to switch coasts. 
I cannot grow plants. ANY plants. I have actually killed cacti. I can’t even grow tomato plants, and all you have to do with those is WATER them, for pity’s sake. My mother, (who, btw, grows orchids on her bathroom WINDOWSILL), tells me I just don’t care enough. I swear I do…the plants are scared of me. Or hate me. Or something. And, I’m beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that it skips generations, this talent, because my daughter can poke a stick in the ground, water it a couple times, talk to it, and a week later it’s a rose bush. sigh…
I can’t do any crafts or anything like that. I’d like to, but almost everything I do turns out lopsided – assuming I can even get started. The last time I tried to sew, I ended up getting the needle stuck in my finger. It didn’t hurt, but it was damned creepy. I even went out and got some children’s craft sets a few weeks ago so I could try again (and surely the kids stuff would be easy, right?) and I couldn’t even figure out the directions.
I can’t drive. The whole venture absolutely terrifies me mostly because I can’t remember how to physically do certain actions (like turning the steering wheel to back out of my driveway facing the direction I want to go). If there were some nice, safe way to practice all of that first, I’d probably be loads better once I got in a real car. But as it is, I’m so afraid of messing up and getting in an accident, I can’t even sit behind the wheel of a parked car without getting nervous.
I can’t sing. Not a capella anyway, I have to sing along with something. My voice has actually gotten better since I was younger, but I have no ear for it at all. Or any music at all. I can tell if something’s off if I have a basis of comparison, but otherwise, I’m lost.
I have no idea how to fix up my hair. My mom and sister spend hours chatting about various hair products and tools and styles and I sit there thinking about how many different heights of ponytails I can do. I’m clumsy with just a hairdryer, never mind a curling iron or something else like that. Something similar occurs the second I even think about eye makeup. I can handle other makeup (and I’m even pretty good with applying it too), but mascara or eyeliner or even eyeshadow in my hands is practically a deadly weapon.
I can’t draw straight lines. Not even with a ruler sometimes. I was actually made fun of in elementary school for this once.
I can cook, but the use of spices escapes me. I could add some if I was following a recipe, but I can’t just taste something and go “Oh, that needs a dash of basil!” or something like my mother (or even my father, who is not exactly great shakes at cooking) can.
For maths it was exactly the same for me. I always assumed that just because I was way more interested in other subjects, I must be bad at it. When I was 17 I got a bit of a shock when I realised I was near the bottom of the class for the first time ever, it was in maths. So I started actually concentrating and working and by the end of the year I managed to get top of my class. I ended up getting the top grade out of 12 that you can be awarded (this is the NZ school system), they are allocated compared to the national average not just the class rankings.
Of course there are many, many things that I just can’t do. Like play tennis. My parents put me in lessons on and off for five years while I was at school and I am still absolutely useless. They even sent me to a military style coach who made us do pushups every time we hit the ball in the wrong place. Me playing tennis is not only funny, but dangerous. In my dad’s large extended family, everyone plays tennis, Christmases and family reunions are 90% made up of matches. I’m left sitting in the shade feeling like I must have been adopted. It’s also pretty much tradition that we have seafood based meals, of course I’m the only one who doesn’t like seafood. :rolleyes:
I also can’t cook. Last time I had a home ec lesson at school (quite a while ago, I was about 14 and my school gave us all sorts of compulsary sessions where we sampled the different subjects) I:
[ul]
[li]Set my food on fire[/li][li]Broke a big glass bowl[/li][li]Pulled the lower oven door off[/li][li]Electrocuted myself with the electric beater, yes seriously, don’t even ask.[/li][/ul]
I also sewed right through my finger when I tried sewing. Fortunately the needle broke halfway!
I can draw–no problem. And I taught myself to oil paint when I was 16. I also taught myself to sneak very close to butterflies so that I could take pictures of them with my telephoto lens. I can identify hundreds of different kinds of mammal, bird, and insect species at a glance and I can speed read like a white tornado.
But I can’t sing. I wish I could because I love music, but all the voice lessons in the world would only raise my performance to “tolerable.” Even my birds screech at me when I sing.
I never could roller skate or jump rope when I was a kid. I never was good at any sports either.
I can’t cook without a recipe. If I follow directions I do okay, but once I decide to wing it cooking-wise I might as well file an environmental impact statement.
I’ve always had trouble following the plots of movies and telling the characters apart. That’s one reason why I prefer to avoid theaters and instead to watch a movie in my own home where I can run it back a ways and re-watch it if I get confused.
I have mixed feelings after reading this thread…
I can sing, I can knit, I can dance, and I’m good at math.
I cannot draw. My mother is an artist, but I ended up with the complete inability to draw. It’s just not there.
I can’t do creative writing…I’ve never been able to do it. I could do essay writing in school, but creative writing (short stories, poetry, even 1/2 page freeform) can’t do it. Just not an ability I’ve ever come close to.
I have no ability to play racquet sports. Not that I’ve ever reached mediocre in any sport I’ve tried (even the ones I love), but occasionally, something goes right, or at least right enough and I catch the ball, or throw ok, or can at least finish the race. Not so with tennis, squash, badminton, pickleball, racquet ball, pingpong, etc. I flunked tennis in PE, and that’s only because there’s no grade lower than an F. I have no idea how people get the racquet to make contact with the object…I think it’s magic, or you’re using magnets or something and no one clued me in.
Singing on key is not hard for me to do although being a bass, it’s very hard to sing to some of my favorite music. Even singing along to Neil Diamond is a strain sometimes.
The human hand appears to be totally incapable of drawing straight lines. That’s why we have rulers, and mine get plenty of use.
Writing is touch and go. People tell me I have a way with words but sometimes I’m at a complete loss. Took me almost 15 minutes to write this post. :eek:
My handwriting is abysmal. Signing my name takes way too long and it always comes out sloppy. And don’t ask me to read anybody’s cursive - it looks like gibberish to me.
I have a fine set of strong lanky limbs, enabling me to excel at things like rock climbing, grabbing stuff and beating up people who make fun of my limbs.
However, this all comes back to bite me in the arse if I ever attempt to skip. On account of my disproportionately long arms, the rope invariably either smacks me in the back of the head, or catches my feet mid leap, landing me in a sprawling heap amongst people effortlessly skipping away.
Skating of any kind is also a recipe for disaster, with the one time I actually managed to get up a decent head of steam ending (after I discovered I had no knowledge of how to steer or brake) with me embedding a foot complete with ice-skate halfway through the barrier surrounding the rink. Attempts to free the skate resulted in my foot slipping out (did I mention I’m not much use at tying skates?) and me casually hopping the mangled barrier and sidling away, never to return.
Oh, and wearing pants aren’t exactly my forte.
I can’t dance. I feel like an idiot. More importantly, I look like one too so now I don’t do it.
I have no fashion sense. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
I can’t learn another language. I’ve tried, I really have, many times. I just have no aptitude for it. This inability really, really annoys me.
I can’t do DIY without a visit to an A&E. In fact, I am completely incompetent constructing or fixing anything.
I have absolutely no sense of direction. I actually quite like this because I end up places I never intended to go to and sometimes have a really good time.