I phrased it that way, rather than saying “what are you bad at?” When it comes to academics, it’s math. I’m good at mental arithmetic, but once I got past basic operations it went downhill fast. Socially, I don’t read signals. Things that I don’t need to use because I can pay other people to do it: spatial relations and mechanical reasoning. Those two I’m really, really not good at. I’m good at enough things to have made a decent living, and I lucked out and have had a long, successful marriage despite the social awkwardness. I tend to be either really good at something or really not good; athletics would be the exception. I’m pretty average there, except for being above average as a distance runner.
Black thumb. I can kill a rough drawing of a plastic plant.
Sport. I am completely inept.
I’m the worst at fishing. While I’ve caught a few fish in my day, literally everyone else I know is better at it than me. If you give a small child, barely older than a toddler, just a raw hook without any bait or lure at all, they literally will have a better chance of catching a fish than I would.
Net casting is another story. If you give me a net to manually cast and a place where there are enough fish that other people are angling, I would probably catch at least one fish given an entire day.
Drawing. I’ve never been able to do better than stick figures.
Yeah, I’m pretty bad at that too. May be related to the deficit in spatial reasoning.
You know that t-shirt that has a few tools on it and says “I Fix Stuff”?
I will never, ever, wear that.
Art, in all its forms.
Plenty of things I’m not good at, but the thing that I’m terrible at that I should be good at is juggling. I can do a couple dozen magic tricks, I tell terrible jokes, and I can balance a broom on my nose (or foot or hand or elbow, or hop it from location to location). Juggling fits right in with that skill package. But I can’t juggle to save my life.
Absolutely no idea how gas engines work. Most other mechanical things I can figure out.
Oh, yeah, socially I’m a dumbass. I’m getting better, but still, not good.
Can’t talk. Mostly ever. Really.
I’m a bad navigator. Bad at taking directions to where something might be, as well.
Home repair and improvement. I am fairly incompetent with tools and any sort of home projects, despite having grown up in a hardware store.
Is “all of the above” a valid answer? Or at least, most of the above.
Small talk.
Chemistry.
I’m an EE and I was always pretty good at science and math. When studying physics, calculus and most engineering topics there’s some level of synergy and the interrelationships between those disciplines means that learning things in one of them can help your understanding of the others.
Not chem, though. To me, it always felt like it was off doing its own thing.
Anything that involves paint. It gets everywhere.
Wrapping gifts. I’ve never been able to do anything better than a sub-average job at it. It seems like it should be easy; they have scouts doing this at the mall for donations! Despite my best efforts, all of my gifts look as though they were – as my mother would charitably describe it – “wrapped with love”.
Sure, I could gift bag it but a Christmas tree with all gift bags doesn’t do it for me. So I spend my Christmas Eve making weirdly misshapen paper lumps that are never properly symmetrical and have the creases all wrong.
Mine is reading comprehension. I’ve always had some type of learning disability that I wasn’t able to get diagnosed in school and college. It’s not dyslexia but some other type perhaps. Luckily I’ve had other employable strengths that I’ve been able to use instead of reading.
Dancing. I make Elaine from Seinfeld look like Ginger Rogers. Give me a enough drinks, and suddenly I think I’m killing it—but in reality, I’m just flailing around like a used car dealership inflatable man with a sprained ankle. If everyone else on the dance-floor is just as hammered, I might just blend in. Or at least avoid a lawsuit.
Signing my full name. With the full first name, and middle name.
Gawd, it’s bad. I’m about to sell a house and I dreading all the name signing I’m going to have to do. I’ve actually been practicing.