For example, for me it’s salt an egg. My Dad salted them for me when I was little and I still can’t do it just right, close, but not exactly.
What can your folks do that you never did quite master?
Mom’s spaghetti sauce. I can get pretty close sometimes, but it’s never quite the same. I don’t understand it, I’ve watched her a zillion times, and I’m no slouch in the kitchen, but I just can’t get it right!
Dad’s painting. I swear, the man could cover the inside of the Vatican with a single gallon of paint, and do it thoroughly. I need a quart to paint the inside of a teacup, and I’ll still miss a spot. :smack:
Mom: Cook (but I’m working on it!), sew, see. How does this 66 year old woman have better vision that I do?
Dad: Fix stuff, nag.
Pretty much anything that doesn’t involve technology or moving heavy objects.
From what I’ve heard my dad could probably drink me under a table.
Decompose.
Bitch and moan about their health. Mine is actually worse than theirs but I only discuss it with my doctor.
I think it is our role as we become old farts to show younger people that we can age with dignity and not whine about every physical complaint.
Pre-1999, my dad was an awesome crossword solver. He had a stroke late that year and died last October.
Save money. They technically have disposable income since they paid off their mortgage and both my sister and I are out of the house… but my mom is still very frugal. I, on the other hand… am not. I like things.
Mom can cook like a chef, so she’s head and shoulders above me. She can also build stuff and I have no clue what to do when it comes to that. She’s really rather talented.
My mom — Art. Drawing and of that variety.
She seems to get more dates than I did my age when I was met my current boyfriend. Got married and had children earlier than I did. In general, she seems to better suited to talking to men than I am. I have no men friends and she has very few women friends.
Dad — Better at commiting than I am. My whole paternal side will take something that seems worthless and put time, money, and effort into it to just really make it work. I kind of can’t see something as more than junk.
Both parents seem to communicate with others better than I do. I take no for no. They somehow get no turned into yes.
My mom can do math in her head WAY better than I can. Also, she remembers phone numbers. Everybody’s phone numbers!
Make biscuits! My mother’s classic Southern biscuits have three ingredients: White Lily self-rising flour, butter-flavored Crisco, and buttermilk. Hers taste like the distillation of everyone’s idealized grandmother’s biscuits. Mine? Meh, at best. I can bake virtually anything else - cakes, yeast breads, quick breads, pies, cornbread - but I don’t seem to have the biscuit gene.
They know how to die. I’m still working on that.
They’re both gone, but I’ve never been able to match my mother’s baking skills. I’m a better cook than she was, but she could do magical things with flour, butter and eggs.
My dad is incredibly accurate at dividing things into equal parts, like pie or cake. He also has a Ph.D. in math, so he can blow me away in absolutely anything related to math. And he’s very good at backing cars into parking spaces, rather than going front-end first.
My mom died, but back when she was alive she was very good at getting rid of wrinkles, whether she was making a bed or folding a shirt. She also had better handwriting than me.
They can bicker like Frank and Estelle Costanza and love it. They’ve done it for over 50 years.
My mom is really good at math and I’m really… not.
My dad could make the best BBQ chicken! He got the sauce thick and gooey, without overcooking the meat. I’ve tried and tried, and could never pull it off. Thankfully, the Mister figured it out, and it’s as good as my dad’s.
My mom has better handwriting than me. She went to secretarial school in the late 60s, and can still remember how to write in shorthand. My BIL was impressed when she showed him a note she wrote in shorthand one day.
My dad is better at computer-related stuff than I am. He worked for IBM in the late 60s-early 70s, back when computers were the size of refrigerators or bigger. We always had a computer in the house since the early 80s, and my brother picked up the knowledge as he grew. I always go to Dad or bro when I have a computer-related question.
My dad has a beautiful, butter smooth, church baritone singing voice. On a good day, I sound like Joe Cocker with a sinus infection. He’s also pretty handy around the shop with any kind of mechanical things. One day he impressed me by accidentally snapping the drill bit he was using in half. He removed the broken stump of the bit from the chuck and took it over to the grinder. Thirty seconds of sparks later, he had a new sharp point on the bit that cut better than it had before it broke.
Mom is gone now but she was always into craft work of every kind. Sewing, quilting, macramé, stamping, painting you name it. She even took a stab at stained glass art and learned to weld so she could work on some metal sculptures.
Mom was also somewhat fanatical about keeping the yard and outside of the house trim and neat.