Athena, goddess of wisdom, practical crafts, and asskicking, owes you a favor. To repay it, she offers to make you miraculously competent in any field you name. But there’s a price: you must surrender your abilities in another field you have already mastered.
What do you opt to become master of, and what do you sacrifice in exchange?
It pains me to sacrifice my knowledge of plants and all things nature. IN return, I ask for one of these:
becoming Sporty Spice
Becoming damn good at my job, with great applied people skills and efforless discipline.
I would trade my insurance skills for the ability to sing and I would quickly become one of the biggest stars the opera world has ever known.
I would trade my pilots license for fluency in just about any foreign language.
Hmmm…I note that Athena says nothing about providing necessary licenses, credentials, or employment, so professional options are limited. Also no mention of restoring youth, so sports are out. Plenty of great actors/singers/dancers/artists don’t make any money. I’ll swap my skill at Duplicate Bridge for skill in Poker.
I will trade my FORTRAN skills to be “miraculously competent” in the stock market.
Good point. You could always ask, of course. Just because Athena’s sweet on you doesn’t mean she doesn’t expect you to think things through.
Funny you mention it, I was going to trade my ability to purchase any stock before it tanks, to purchase any stock before it takes off!
The former is not an ability. It’s an INability.
I will trade my piano skills for becoming an expert in all things related to health and fitness. That should give me the body I covet.
I will trade my ability to be nice to everyone for the ability to play the piano very well, rather than just ‘sorta okay’ as I currently do.
I praise you, great Athena, flint-eyed daughter of excellent Zeus…
In exchange for my ability to cook, I humbly beseech you to grant me the ability to entertain people by telling a good yarn.
I’d happily trade away my mastery of double-entry book-keeping (To be honest, I don’t really use it much anyway since the computer does most of the account management automatically these days.) for being able to paint something that doesn’t look like it was made by Picasso at age 5 while drunk.
Easy, peasy, Japoneesy.
I’ll trade my skill at poker (did very well at the Encore last week) for skill in meeting good women.
/met a nice girl in Vegas
//lost all interest when she said “The liberal media needs to stop picking on Sarah Palin!”
///Somehow lost even more interest when she said that “I like that Bush went into Iraq after 9/11”
I’ll trade my skill at cooking for the ability to make small-talk.
:dubious:
I’d trade my ability to speak Bulgarian for the ability to speak Spanish or French or Arabic or pretty much any language that’s more useful than Bulgarian.
I would trade…
dang, this is hard. Uh…
I would trade my moderate skills at Chess for the ability to play drums moderately as well. Or guitar.
I’m an interpreter and I’d happily trade my abilities in Russian (and Spanish, too if need be) for enough skill at poker to make a comfortable living at it.
We might be able to work out an even trade. I’m no expert, but I exercise regularly, am very physically fit, and have the body I want, with the possible exception of about 5 extra lbs around my waist. But I’ve always wanted to be able to sit at a piano and just play.