Giving dinner parties without melting down from the stress of planning, cooking, making things perfect. Other people can do it casually and effortlessly and even enjoy it.
Small talk. It’s so tediously boring that I always end up saying something a bit unexpected just to stay awake. The unexpected is against small talk rules.
Drawing. Anything. My brain is very visual, but I just don’t “see” edges, shadows, and perspective, so I can’t draw.
I forgot to mention office politics. I lack the ability to play the game. Instead I smile, act friendly, and do a really good job. Which, as we know, is not what matters.
Math. I just don’t get it when it’s anything harder than long division. Algebra? All of those letters and numbers together are really ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, aren’t they? Geometry? I never understood how to prove a triangle has 3 sides using theorems and postulates. So, anytime I see a math equation that has letters of the alphabet in it, my eyes immediately glaze over. Also, word problems that require algebraic (or harder) terms to solve.
Another is programming. Most times, I can read code, and see what’s supposed to happen. But writing it myself? No way. I can’t even write a simple Windows batch file.
cf’75
I second this one. And I’m not even particularily fond of sculpture. But it’s blatantly obvious to me that nobody ever could possibly make a statue out of a block of stone.
People who prioritize and multitask well. I have no problem focusing on one thing, and then moving on to something else. But people who can do 5 or 6 things at once, quickly ranking them by urgency and importance and needed attantion, and getting them all done in a satisfactory-to-exemplary manner…? Unreal to me.
Women, my hat’s off to you.
Like many others, I cannot do any visual arts. Nor do I understand many mechanical things. Small talk is equally amazing.
Exactly. I just don’t get it. If it’s sales, the seller names a price that’s too high, and the buyer names a price that’s too low. The seller knows that his price is too high and that the buyer’s price is too low. The buyer knows that his price is too low and that the seller’s price is too high. They both know that the other knows, too. So why waste energy on this crap? Just name what you consider to be fair prices and take an average, and you can both spend more time with the family.
Now, if it’s more complex matters, I can appreciate the art of it, even though it’s incomprehensible to me. I had the opportunity of watching a man known in the Swedish business world as the best negotiator in the country going at it with the man known as the second best. It was something to behold; even more so since It’s so far beyond me.
I do, but that’s totally different. Poker makes sense. Negotiating doesn’t. In poker, you don’t know when your opponent lies and when he’s telling the truth, and therein lies the point of the game. In negotiation, your opponent lies all the time, and you know it, and he knows that you know. And vice versa.
Differential calculus. I understand roughly what purpose it’s supposed to do, but as far as doing the actual manipulation of the equations; I’m convinced to this day that you’re all just in on a big joke, of which I’m the butt.
And ditto with the magic eye things (although this is probably because I don’t have proper stereoscopic vision due to a lazy left eye.
I’m only a sophomore engineering student, but I can’t understand how people extrapolate from a mulitview drawing to a 3D shape. (In this picture, the multiview is the three pics at the bottom.) I know that all of the information is in the multiview, but it just doesn’t register in my head.
I’m amazed by people who can organize.
It’s the little things, really. I have a friend that when I go to her house I’m always fascinated by the baskets, shelves of cubicles, shoes in their own boxes! The bathroom is the killer. Shelves with individual boxes labeled for cotton balls, swabs, razors…and there’s no dust anywhere!
I tried this once. The little shelf o’boxes is full of junk that I never use and the stuff I do use is strewn all over the back of the toilet. I am a slob.
I’ll second this one. Just balancing the checkbook is enough to give me an anxiety attack.
Also the magic eye pictures (I agree with Ensign Edison that it’s all a big consiracy), negotiating for a better price, and poker. I understand the basics of poker, but I just don’t ‘get’ it.
And Blackjack. You get four or five cards out, and four or five hands, and I don’t trust my math skills enough to add them in my head and get 21 (or whatever) quickly enough.
Oh, and boat locks. Canals. I understand how they work, but I am just in complete and total awe of them. I can watch that Discovery Channel fast-motion footage of boats moving through the locks over and over again, as the water rises and falls, and I’m just slack-jawed, saying, “Well, would ya lookit that! What won’t they think of next!”
I’m just amazed by boat locks.
I’m not amazed by “salesmanship”, I’m repelled by it. My sonabitch gramps used to be a top-notch salesman and I can detect bullshit from miles away. You try to bullshit me, that’s one sale less.
I’m fascinated by people who can keep up with and care about fashion. I’m a jeans and a tee kind’a girl - good thing that’s usually ok for engineers.
I suffer from severe directional impairment. I cannot follow any directions that include things like “Turn west on….” West? What’s wrong with right or left? Even better is to say, “turn left by the Walgreens”. There are other people I know have some sort of instinctive internal compass inside of them that enable them to know what direction they’re facing at any given time. That’s almost akin to magic to me.
That reminds me of a lecturer I had in college last semester. Oh my god, my prof looked up his resume and he had TWO PAGES dedicated to the laguages he knew! Granted, they were organized in categories such as “speaking fluent”, “reading fluent”, and all the way down to being able to read the language but couldnt translate. I was completely awestruck when I looked at that, because after three years of french I can remember a few phrases and translate written text, but thats it. I have a friend who is triligual too, knowing French, Hebrew, and English. Perfectly fluent, to boot. It never ceases to fascinate me.
Other than that, I can never understand how people can take the amazing photos I see at art shows. I even recognize different scenes, but my photos look so amature compared to theirs, even if its a similar angle and the same site. Completely amazing.
As someone struggling to learn guitar, yeah, I’ll wholeheartedly endorse this. And not just the mechanics of it either. The ability to memorize songs, for some people hundreds of songs, just blows me away.
All you people who are amazed at anyone knowing languages and music should share my amazement at people who take a song in one language and can translate it into another. How can you make it fit the rhyme scheme, music, plot and intonation? Boggles my mind.
Office politics, doing math in one’s head, sense of direction.
Same here; like I said I get angry when someone tries to do it to me. But I’m amazed that there are people who do it, amazed that it works, and so forth.
Sense of direction - how could I forget that one? I find my way based entirely on landmarks. If I make a couple of turns I no longer have a clue which way I used to be heading. Maps of a certain city that I’ve spent quite a large chunk of my life in look totally wrong, since that building there should be parallel to that street there, not perpendicular.
I have a friend who, in the middle of a small square in Prague, could point the way towards Sweden. I have no clue how that is done.
Telling lies. I can’t do it. Even when I intend to tell a white lie, I can’t do it convincingly, or keep track of what I told whom.
Honesty doesn’t count for much these days, but I’m good at that.
I’m with brightpenny on al the unstructured social stuff with aquintances and strangers. I just feel it is such hard work. All those things that can go wrong…and if everything goes right, I’ve got nothing else to show for it but a night spent at somthing I don’t enjoy and get stressed out about. Yet, I so want to be good at it…so I keep trying.
