Even though I am a college grad (with an average gpa) and relatively smart, and well read…there are still relatively simple, well understood things that boggle my mind and impress me because I cannot wrap my mind around. The most astounding example is songwriting. Even a simple, three minute craptastic pop song is somewhat impressive to me because I just can’t even believe how difficult it must be to WRITE THE MUSIC FOR A SONG. To come up with something original and new and know the notes and chords and how other instruments should play, and then put lyrics to it? Seriously amazing.
What are some things that utterly amaze you that your fellow dopers may find easy?
I can’t see those Magic Eye things…I think it’s all big conspiracy, though, so it doesn’t count.
People who can follow choreography easily amaze me. I can dance without falling over or taking out somebody’s eye, but I can’t watch someone else dancing and then copy what they do. I certainly can’t follow instructions for it, either. My feet tangle.
I don’t drive. I’m 26, I can’t drive, I live in NYC so it doesn’t much matter but I am amazed at how casually people go about ramming these steel monstrosities around the streets.
Driving a stick is amazing to me. I’ve tried it about three times and it seems like fifty five times more work than automatic. I ended up practically giving myself whiplash.
I can’t alphabatize anything. If I look in the phone book for the number to the pizza delivery place, in my head I am singing the “Alphabet song” until I get to “P”. I have two college degrees and work a a computer tech. :o
I know some piano. Enough that I can play a melody so that I’ll know how to sing it, basically. But whenever I try to play actual piano music, I feel like I’m reading a score written for two different instruments, and I would need two brains to play it. Then there’s organ scores written on three staves, and played with all four limbs - gah!
Being a surgeon or medical worker of any kind. I am just so unbelievably squeamish that dealing with the inner workings of anyone else’s body on such a visceral level simply astounds me. There are truly ALL KINDS of people in this world. Thank god. Because I would want no part whatsoever in that sort of thing… shoot, I can’t even touch raw meat. euck!
Selling anything to anyone, especially if it’s garbage. Or collecting for charity. I’ve tried a couple of times to do this kind of work and yea, verily, I suck mightily at it.
XaMcQ what you said. I’m always amazed (and appalled) when listening to a sales man/woman. My only experience with them was as a customer, until I went to work for a company that sold high end photocopiers. Oh My! :eek: These things were five figures, with no warranty of any kind. They were only good for about 4 years, before they had to be replaced or have a permanant tech installed. But these sales people would convince businesses to lease them for five to seven years, with service contracts that, over that time, cost them more that the dm copier. Then when the copier started going south, they’d convince them to “trade the old one in” except, they had to pay for the entire lease, it was just folded into the new lease. :dubious:
tiny ham, I’m the same. I took 9 years of voice lessons and still can’t read music. It might as well have been written on Arcturis. (After 8 years, my teacher retired and the woman who replaced her, told me I’d probably be happier with a new hobby. :rolleyes: )
Ensign Edison, I used to have a cartoon on my 'frig: Two women talking on the street.
First woman: “I haven’t seen you at Jazzercise™ lately.”
Second woman: I had to quit, I broke a foot."
First, looking down: “So, how is it?”
Second: “I have no idea, it wasn’t my foot.”
Knowing a second (or third, etc.) language. I took four years of French in high school and even then I sucked at it. Yet some people seem to pick up other languages much easier. I really admire them. Especially immigrants who come here to America and have to learn English with all its little nuances and quirks. Pretty darned amazing!
People who can draw with perfect proportion. My drawings all look like fanboy anime scrawlings. I had an ex who could just sit down and start drawing as if he were tracing the already drawn picture. The lines were smooth and perfect, the proportions correct (even if it was just a cartoon doodle). He could start with a leg and still make it come out exactly the way he had to be picturing it. Drove me crazy.
I also had a friend in high school who had a similar knack for that kind of thing. She once pinned a small picture of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night to the wall, then proceeded to copy the thing - exactly - mural-sized onto the back artroom wall. It took my breath away to see it. I have poster print of that painting on my wall here at home, and I stare at it forever, amazed at how beautiful it is, but even more amazed when I remember my friend, calmly and quietly painting every lunch hour and during her Art class (which I was in with her - I painted deer with shingles, grazing in a stunted forest, but I can stipple like nobody’s business!). Just remembering that, damn. It took her about a month, and the end result was just… I get misty just thinking about it. Beyond awesome.
I guess that’s not necessarily simple. The ex drawing, yes. The Van Gogh thing, not so much. But she did make it* look* simple.
Sculpting. Every time I visit an art museum I’m just completely blown away that anyone can take a chunk of marble and find a human form inside it. Not only find it, but bring it forth complete with curls in the hair and nuance of expression—it’s simply amazing.
Any kind of negotiation, whether it be sales or something else. I feel like Rain Man when I see it done, and I just get annoyed when I have to do it myself, and angry when someone tries to do it to me. I can’t even wrap my head around the concept. I don’t get how it works.
People who can draw or paint, period. It boggles my mind how they can know how many brush/paint strokes to use, what colors/density to use in shading, how to do the composition, and all that plus conveying a mood.
I’m particularly overwhelmed right now because I’ve been to the Brandywine River Museum three times in the last three days, plus the Delaware Art Museum AND the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We were mostly following the Andrew Wyeth exhibits. He’s never taught art to anyone, not even his kids, on the grounds that you either have talent or you don’t. I have to say I agree: I don’t know how anyone could teach talent.
That may be because it shouldn’t work. It’s not logical, anyhow. It’s basically a complex system of bluffing. When I read this, I wondered if you play poker, and if so, wanted to say it may make more sense if you look at it in that context.
That made me think of the converse of the OP, things I find simple that amaze others, like poker (not that it’s easy to be truly great or even good, but it seems incredibly simple to be mediocre at); Tetris (I worked hard to be great [Loser. --Ed.], but part of being great at this particular game is that it looks so easy when played perfectly); basic cooking that involves things like simple sauces and raw ingredients, which is like mind-numbingly easy to do but seems to scare a lot of my boxes-and-cans oriented peers.
But I like the OP itself and shouldn’t hijack. Another thing on topic: freestyle rapping. Sweet Jebus Crust that sounds impossible to me. I can write rhymes if I have a lot of time and privacy and paper, but to spit it like that, even knowing the tricks and handy phrases and so on, it seems like a supernatural gift to me.
Any kind of artwork. Painting, sculpting, drawing, carving, whatever. I can’t do it, and can’t see how so many other people can do it seemingly so casually and easily.
Writing music, and having perfect pitch. I can read music and play a couple instruments (not well, since I haven’t really touched them in years,) but I couldn’t identify any note by sound at all, and have no idea what notes sound good together. Oh, and I couldn’t play any music that has more than one line to follow. How the hell can you hit every note on those two bar piano music things and the pedals?! I can’t even follow two bars, let alone follow them and then hit the notes!
Languages also baffle me. I had a social studies teacher in high school who knew, to my knowledge, French, Spainish, Chinese (I think Mandarin), Japanese, Swahili, Italian, Portugese, German, Russian, and maybe more (not all at perfect fluentcy, but enough to easily get by where only that language was spoken.) I took three years of latin (granted, not one of those languages you are ever going to use in a conversation, but still) and I struggled with it. I mean, how the hell can you keep all those verb conjucations, noun declensions, vocabulary, and other rules all in your head, and not mix them the fuck up? Especially really similar languages like Portugese and Spainish?
