Noticing or spotting things. If its that squirrel 200 yards away when I’m hunting or that part of the system that isn’t quite working right at work, that odd feel in the car or that strange noise outside, I just notice things other people miss. It has made me some money over the years but mostly its kept me safe a lot of times.
Related to that – I will claim title to being one of the outstanding motorcyclists out there. Not just from winning a lot of field trials and different events but based on going about 400,000 miles since the last time I dropped one. I practice my skills and defensive driving to the point that I rarely come close more than 2-3 times a year. Of course I have now jinxed myself and will be run over by a cement truck on my way to work today but ------------
I’m really good at chess (including chess problem solving.)
I’ve come 4th = in a British Chess Championship, 1st= in a British Speed Chess Championship and was part of the UK team that won a World Chess Solving event.
My highest ELO rating was 2390 (not bad for an amateur.)
I am good at public speaking. I’m absolutely terrible at one-on-one communication, but I am a great communicator when I have time to prepare what I’m going to say.
I am good at assuring my boss that everything will work out. Our team is full of people who are quick to scream “The sky is falling”, but I tend to see problems more dispassionately, which then helps me come up with solutions. I’ve been told I have a “calming presence.”
I am good at cobbling together other people’s R code. I struggle with writing scripts from scratch, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you get the answer as long as you get it.
I am good at making people laugh in boring staff meetings.
I also have video of me doing pull-ups while wearing a weight vest (I forget how much it weighed, but probably not that much), but that video is from two years ago.
Which might be moderately impressive for a male – but I’m a female.
Flying pipeline patrol, aerial photo aircraft.
Playing bridge, soccer refereeing, sailing small boats ( under 28 feet ) Getting up on a slalom ski behind small under powered boats, Driving ski boats for stunt water skiers.
Reading large books at one sitting without stopping to eat, sleep, “P” or anything that would stop my being in that place & time. ( longest was 26 hours. )
Keeping secrets ( bad memory really )
This is all before I turned 60. I am now 73 so I am now the best at remembering what I did or could do.
*Also, navigation, positional awareness, (knowing where I am facing and where cardinal direction are in relation to myself, giving directions etc. ) *
Awesome! I’m not too bad at pullups either. I believe my record (while strapped into my wheelchair) is 29 pullups. Mind you, I must use a rope hanging from the pull up bar to climb up to the bar itself. So that takes away from how many I could do. But congrats! Seeing a girl do what you do would seriously impress me.
Aw shucks! You and HoneyBadgerDC have both brightened my day. Thank you! (And seriously, today of all days it especially helped to hear that, because some days I get really worked up and frustrated about being the weaker sex, and today was one of those days.)
Public speaking. In a previous life I won many awards for impromptu speeches. They would give you a topic, and immediately ask you to speak for 5 minutes. It was a lot of fun.
Later, I became the cribbage king. No one could beat me.
Now, I seem to be good a pissing people off. Not a lot of party invitations.
I used to be able to do that – I could remember childhood details about where I was, by remembering what direction I was facing. But when I lived for several years in the southern temperate latitudes, I lost it, and I have a theory about that. You unconsciously adjust for direction as time passes,because of the passage of the sun across the sky, from left to right. But in the southern hemisphere, the sun moves from right to left. Since then, I never instinctively know directions anymore.
Never spent any real time in the upside down parts of the world.
I believe that a lot of my ability comes from flying small planes. Family always had a couple while my Dad was alive and we did a lot of land travel also.
He was 90° out in Red River, New Mexico as to North the first time he there he was young, at night in a storm with some serious problems and was turned wonky in his thoughts as to where N was.
Long time (years) later we would fly into Eagle Nest airport and as soon as he got out of the plane, his head would do the wonky thing and he & us kids had some fun teasing him about being lost all the time as we wandered around the mountains on cloudy days. That was the only place that happened to him.
As a kid he taught me to read a map going in any direction with the map orientation every which a way. Also I was blindfolded sometimes and did not even know direction we were going and after an hour or so I would have to find us on a sectional map that he said we were on someplace. ( he had fun doing that to me because I thought it was fun. Other siblings, not so much.
Plus I am just lucky that I have an natural ability for this as I can even do it SCUBA diving in very low visibility.
Down side is that I forget that manny peoples can’t do it and I get frustrated with them. (bad on me) :smack:
Now I try to keep my mouth shut and just sadly, slowly shake my head.
An address in an unfamiliar town on an obscure street is much easier with the GPS units but it feels like cheating. he he he
I’m really good at putting images to music. In photo montages and stuff. I produced them for Bar Mitzvahs and such and it culminated at my 30th reunion when I did one for our class. The lights came up and, amidst the applause, I turned around all the (former) cheerleaders were crying.
I think my run is over – age, weight and a knee issue – but I was really good at making diving catches in softball/baseball. I think I had my final one a couple weeks ago, unique in that it was the first to be actually caught on video.
I am able to pick up a new-to-me musical instrument and play it.
I have a superior mind for trivia. I have played hundreds of trivia games and never lost. In a related matter, I am an excellent standardizer test taker. I strongly feel that each of these skills supports performance in the other.
I am also a natural arbitrater. Even as a child I was the one who sat down two quarreling friends and brought them back to concord. As an adult, I have used this ability to wrestle through tough employer-employee disputes.
I’m with you jtur88. I usually pick up the basics of anything I put my hand to pretty easily, but beyond that I usually lose interest pretty quickly. I can do anything really, with a little basic instruction. Perform an appendectomy? let me watch a couple, do a few with an attending physician just in case and then let me loose, no sweat. dig a ditch by hand in the most effort-efficient manner possible? Give me a shovel and a mattock. In a couple days I might come back with a request for a few other hand tools to make moving dirt easier, piece of cake.
Memorizing things. I’m dynamite at spelling and phone numbers. The store I work at sells aluminium tins with codes we have to put into the register. Nobody consults the map of codes. They just yell my name, hold up the pan, and get the correct code.
Whenever we get new tins and new codes, people at other branches of the store call me for codes.
This is really a thing. I grew up immersed in the world of orienteering, I was good at it to the level of state champion. I could orient myself rapidly and with certainty.
Then I lived in the UK for a few years. My instincts were just totally out of whack. I remained perfectly good at *conscious *navigation but my immediate assumptions were always wrong. My explanation is the same as yours.
