My mom and grandma make great applesauce. If I ask them how to make it, they give vague answers on how much of each ingredient to use. They probably just estimate as they go, but it makes it harder for me to get it right. My mom also used to make the best mashed potatoes when I lived at home.
I still can’t fry an egg like my mom. I’m a fair cook, too, but the perfect fried egg eludes me. She still cooks a mean turkery; I’ve only attempted one or two turkeys in my life, so hers are definitely better.
I’m not sure how she does it, but things seem to fall into order and cleanliness around her (and do the opposite around me) - you never really see her cleaning, but somehow she does. I love it when she housesits when we go on vacation, because the house is spotless and more organized when we come back.
My dad’s been dead for a few years now, but he was an inventor and jack-of-all-trades back in the day. If you needed a tool to do it, he could do it better than me.
Feel cold
worry and fret
mistake gas pedal for brake
set house on fire by forgetting to shut off stove
breaking hip bone
backing car out of garage without opening the door
remembering inane trivia about 1938
taking all the junk mail seriously
having the heat on and leaving windows open
I think my mother is a sociopath, so that makes her have a keen business mind. She can see how to make money in any situation. I feel bad when I’m taking advantage of somebody else, so I don’t make as much.
I feel with 100% confidence my dad could take me in a fight. He’s 60, I’m 29 (and I’m in great shape and go to the gym all the time) but my dad was a city cop for 40 years.
Yes! I am far better than my mother at math, and actually tutored her when she went back to school as an adult, but fuck if I can calculate 8.25% sales tax in my head to the penny in five seconds.
Cook. Parallel park. Repair electrical things. Discover cool useful computer programs.
My mom is far better with babies and and children. She can pick up a fussy infant and the baby suddenly starts smiling at her; she can just smile at some random tantruming toddler at the grocery store, and the kid quiets down and starts behaving. I have no idea what her trick is, but it’s remarkable.
She doesn’t care for cooking at all, but she makes fried potatoes that are amazing. She’s the person who taught me how to make them, but I’ve never yet made them as good as hers.
She can do math in her head, and her handwriting is beautiful and perfect. I, on the other hand, almost need an adding machine with a printout to add more than single digit numbers, and can barely read my own handwriting.
Die.
While I worked as a respiratory therapist, they both (because they had smoked their lungs down to a sack of garbage) were also my patients.
I was there when they both passed away (3 years apart - Dad first), and even though they both looked like they understood when I talked to them, neither of them said a word to me at the last.
My Mom died with a 100% Non-Rebreather mask on her face and an O2 sat of 45. I talked to her doc about it beforehand and he gave me a choice: let her pass on the vent or move her to a private room and just keep her comfortable. My brother and I chose the latter.
My Dad just lay there quietly and when I made my rounds at 3 am (I saw him last at 11pm and he was resting quietly), he was gone.
So both of them just quietly left us.
They may have said “goodbye” to us long before and we just didn’t listen or didn’t want it to be, but apparently nothing else needed to be said.
So they did something better than what I think I will be able to do.
Just go.
Q
Crap! Missed the word “still”.
Why don’t y’all just shoot my dumb ass???
Jesus!
Q
Pushing up daisies.
Charm people. When she wants to, my mum can have pretty much anyone eating out of her hand within in moments of meeting them. I am getting more and more like her in this respect as I get older, but she is still the master.
I think I am generally the better cook, because I’m more patient and focused (mum has a butterfly brain and can’t concentrate on anything for long), but she makes much better desserts than me.
And while we’re both good with babies, mum can get even the shyest or most obnoxious of kids chatting pleasantly to her almost straight away, whereas I have no idea how to talk to children, and didn’t even when I was one.
Drive. Both my parents are passed, but dad was a far better driver than me. I view driving as a boring mode of transportation :- he viewed it as a competitive sport,albeit a sport with obvious restrictions when he had a granddaugher in the car.
We went on a track day when he was in his 60s, with Porsches and stuff, and he outdrove me by minutes (well, half a minute), and he wasn’t even trying. He had all kind of race driver tricks he’d pull even when street driving, and yet my 11 year old daughter remembers him as “the safest driver I was ever in a car with :- I wish you were as good a driver as grandad”.
Pay bills.
Be racist.
Well, sure.
How could you be expected to do math in her head at all?
Dad: Storm the beach at Normandy.
Mom: Look really good in a tight sweater.
and decompose, which is what I came in here to say, a bit too late…
ETA: just noticed OP said “still” do better than you. never mind…
My father can can do all sorts of monetary math in his head. He does mortgages, taxes and stuff like that off the top of his head and is usually withing a couple of bucks. I barely understand the stuff and here he is telling me how much it will be.
I’m sure he could still out run my ass too, he’s 60 and I’m 37. I don’t think there’s any distance I could beat him in.
My dad has way more energy then I have. He’s nearly eighty and he’s just back from a month long trip to do developement work in an remote voillage in Guatemala. He works, bikes harder then anyone I know. I get exhausted just looking at him. He’s also very good at making tailor made solutions, as long as they can be made using wood, bamboo, screws and tire rubbers.
My mom is not better at anything then I am. Which is annoying, because she wants to advise me all the time and her advice is always (objectively) completely useless.
My mom has passed away, but my dad still makes delicious rice, and I cannot manage rice on a pot, at all, and have given up trying.