What common and useful skill do you absolutely not have?

Actually, that’s why cellophane exists. I’m not particularly good at wrapping stuff - well, I wasn’t until my mum clued me up on using a sheet or two of tissue to hide the contents, covering that in cellophane, and then running a hair dryer over it to shrink it. Looks professional, it’s dirt cheap, and even I can do it.

I can’t type without looking at the keys.

I can’t tie a balloon.

I’ve taken many advanced math classes (I’m an EE), and have done well in them, but I can’t do even the simplest math in my head. For adding numbers I use my fingers.

While I look fairly athletic, I can’t throw a ball, bowl, or swing a golf club.

I have no idea how to balance a checkbook.

Even though there are only three of them, I can never remember what the primary colors are.

When watching football on TV, I can’t follow the ball. I can see the ball at the start of the play, and at the end of it. But during the play, all I see is a garbled mess of guys running and falling.

I know absolutely nothing about wine. When I see the wine selection at a fine restaurant, I am hoping whomever I am with will order the wine.

I can’t figure out how to use my cell phone. I have no idea how to save numbers, listen to messages, send text messages, etc. I guess I could learn this stuff if I spent some time with it, but I just don’t want to.

I can’t read stupid looking fonts. When I have to read something with a font I hate, I paste it into Word, change the font, and read it in Word.

I can’t stand getting a shot. I cringe up, start to sweat, make fists, etc. The nurse always has to tell me to relax. But I can’t.

I have no idea how to dress properly. I just wear jeans and a T-shirt everywhere. Even to work.

I am amazed by people who can watch a movie and understand everything that’s going on. For the life of me I can’t follow the plot in a movie, and I instantly lose track of who’s who.

I can’t sleep unless there’s a firearm within arm’s reach.

GPS’s are not that expensive and I love mine to pieces.
Get this one!

I can’t recognise people’s faces. This gets to be a problem every day. Saying hi to the wrong people, ignoring people I know, not understanding movies if two people have the same hairdo because I can’t tell the people in the movie apart…

I remember people by looking for something about them that I can memorise (a mole? strangely shaped eyebrows? unruly hair?). Sometimes I can’t find anything distinctive though, and that’s where the trouble begins. Sometimes after a while, I can burn their face in my memory, but even after that if I try to recall what someone looks like, I can only bring to mind one facial expression. It’s like my mind only has one photo per person.

Anecdote time! Just last week I got on the train and sat next to a guy and he started talking to me.

Guy: Hey.
Me: Hi.
Guy: What’s up?
Me: Nothing.
Guy (gesturing to my bag, which advertises a cupcake bakery): Do you work at Cupcakes?
Me: No, I just like to eat them.
Guy: So… what’s UP?
Me (figuring now that by “what’s up” he is asking what I’m doing): I’m just going to my boyfriend’s…
Guy: puts earphones back in
Me (mentally): WTF? does the same

I thought he was hitting on me and being totally weird. The next day at work my friend tells me “My boyfriend ran into you on the SkyTrain and he was totally embarrassed because you thought he was hitting on you!” This was a guy I had sat with and talked with for quite a while on two occasions. I went to two parties with my friend and her boyfriend and I talked to them for most of the time I was there. I just cannot remember faces. It just does not happen!

To be fair though, he gave all the signs of strangeness! Her boyfriend knows where I work, or so I thought, so it is strange that he asked. Also, putting the earphones back in when I said “boyfriend”. He thought I was saying that to get him to shut up, but I really was just telling him what I was doing. Confusion all around and two embarrassed people result.

Now, I am awesome with names. Had he said “I’m Dale, remember me?” that would have gone a lot differently.

When I tell people about this, the most common response is, “Really? I’m just the opposite, I’m good with faces, I can’t remember people’s names!”

Also, add me to the list of those who cannot smalltalk. I also have trouble looking people in the eyes, tending to flit about the room with my eyes and fidget with my hands instead. Yep, I tell ya, I’m just a joy to be around. :smiley:

From reading this list it appears my biggest disability is I don’t have any anecdotally amusing disabilities … I can cook, sew, navigate, fix cars, sleep without a gun in the house (better, if anything), wrap presents, spell, catch and throw, whistle, snap my fingers, swim, parallel park, count, slice food, drive a manual (“stick”), shuffle cards, walk up or down stairs, talk small or public. Doctor, what’s wrong with me?

I guess my writing, typing and recognition of those I haven’t met many times before aren’t great, but they’re adequate.

I honestly think the direction thing must be some kind of brain disability. It boggles my mind when my boyfriend can’t find things. Like his car. In a parking lot. He gets lost in the mall. He has no idea what entrance we came in or how we get back to it. He’s lived in this town for seven or eight years now and he still can’t find anything but the things he goes to most frequently. He finally got a GPS but he has to follow it absolutely slavishly - yesterday we went to a wedding in Georgia and when the GPS took us “through” a dead end parking lot he went off road to get to the road it said he should be on. I was like “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WHY DON’T YOU JUST TURN AROUND THIS IS SOMEBODY’S BACK YARD?” and he said “But it says.” I honestly think it’s like those people who are medically face-blind or who can describe something as four longer cylinders and one shorter one attached to a sort of squarish bag but not be able to call it a “glove”. It has got to be some sort of brain disability where there’s a missing connection or something. It has to be. I just don’t understand how you can not know how to get places, or especially once you’ve gotten there I don’t see how you can forget how you got there and not be able to get back. You just go back the way you came!

Of course, he had to drive because I can’t drive stick. :slight_smile:

…having just come over from the pit, the one that comes to mind straight away is:

Use chopsticks.
*Others (not including things I haven’t tried): *

Dance to anything other than rock music (i.e. anything that requires any sort of skill)
Remember faces & names until I’ve met someone about 4 times
Tell one wine from another (well, apart from red, white or rose)
Do the ‘riffle’ card shuffle (I can do the other type).

I’m LOUSY with verbal confrontations. Faced with a hostile customer, I can handle myself as long as they are clearly in the wrong (at least as far as our company playbook goes). But if the complainant is in the right, or in a situation where I feel they deserve the benefit of the doubt, I’m almost completely unable to throw up the bureaucratic brick wall that just about everyone else in my workplace can.

For the life of me, I cannot remember names. There have been people I’ve worked with for years whose names I failed to retain from the beginning, and only learned surreptitiously well after the fact.

I have little sense of visual recall. Recognition, yes. Recall, no. As a police witness I would be a hopeless case. Ask me to describe the person I just talked to for twenty minutes? Nope, can’t do it. Quiz me on what my supervisor was wearing this morning? I’d fail.

Ironing clothes. It takes me twenty minutes to press the wrinkles out of one dress shirt. My parents bought me a clothes steamer for Christmas last year. Best gift I’ve ever gotten.

That being said, I am pretty decent at: wrapping presents, driving a stick, snapping my fingers, balancing my checkbook, shuffling cards, baking, speaking in front of audiences, changing a tire, and parallel parking.

Another person with no sense of direction. Nobody in my family has it. We are just missing that particular gene.

When I moved, it took me a month to realize my street was the next left after the third outdoor church sign on the right.

I can’t estimate volume or distance or time.
I’m terrible at remembering names.
I can hardly parallel park. Honestly, I just suck at parking in general.
I have a terrible memory - I’ll never be the wife that in a fight brings up random things my husband said two years ago.

I have a horrible time with those pump-top bottles (shampoo, liquid soap, whatever). I’m always surprised when I manage to get one open.