I’ve been asked to demonstrate string figures (they’re like Cat’s Cradle, but you do it alone) to a bunch of elementary students.
I love string figures.
I hate teaching them.
It’s not because I don’t enjoy the look of delight on people’s faces as they learn a new figure. It’s just that my brain does not know how to do any string figures; my hands do. I’m hard pressed to even slow down enough that someone can watch what I’m doing and learn it that way–and trying to provide a verbal description, like as not, ends up with me and my student tangled up in knots.
Well, I’m working on my pedagogical technique.
I was also asked to get someone started on Emacs, a text editor. Emacs commands involve very combinations of the control and escape keys and every other conceivable character on the the keyboard. An experienced Emacs user never reaches for the mouse; (s)he can do everything with key commands. Now, I knew there was a command to select a region and copy it without deleting it (killing it, to Emacs afficianados). My hands know how to do it. They do it every day. But as soon as I tried querying my brain, I got completely screwed up. I finally had to look it up. (It’s M-w, by the way.) I had similar trouble with the cursor commands. I just think, “I want the cursor there,” and my hands do it, but if you asked me to tell you the sequence of commands I used to move the cursor, I’d be at a loss.
So what are the things your hands know how to do that your brain doesn’t bother with anymore?
I can play The Entertainer on the piano if I don’t think about it. Also Bohemian Rhapsody if I don’t stop. If I try to think what comes next, I lose it.
My piano teacher called it muscle memory.
When I make tortillas, I can feel if there’s enough water in the dough, but I could never give you a receipe you can follow. It has to feel right before you roll it out, or it sticks to the rollong pin.
It took innumerable hours slowly working out the subtle difference between the two sounds. Exercises repeated over and over again, massaging the sound until my hands created the note my mind wanted to hear. I can tell you in a textbook way what is going on and what makes each sound different. But if you (or I) watch my hands closely it is impossible to tell the difference between notes. I think tone and out a tone comes. Slap and a slap is played. I don’t know what my hands are doing to make those sounds, they are merely acting out extended impulses of my imagination.
My fingers know several phone numbers my brain has forgotten. I can’t tell you want they are, I have to tap a table and figure out what the pattern is. Thank goodness rotary phones are almost extinct.
With deaf parents, sign language is my first language - if i had to think about it, that would be weird. My hands know words I’ve consciously forgotten. In fact when I get tired, my hands take over and I sign without thinking rather than talk. Which obviously gets a bit tricky when no one else signs.
I don’t mind teaching people. It does get a little frustating when people think you ought to be able to demonstrate the basic principles and then they can figure out for themselves, as if it’s not a proper language but some cobbled-together miming. Bah. But apart from that, it’s fine.
I simply cannot look at a keyboard or think about a keyboard and type. I have to close my eyes and just run the workd sthrough my brain. (It’s funny to watch because I look like Ray Charles when I wave my head around
I’m with Tyklfe on the typing–I often type with my eyes shut. (It weirds people out, BTW.) It’s much the same with the various wind instruments that I play; if I think about fingering or slide positions, I lose it.
On a slightly different note, I throw a lot of bean bags in the IFGS (they represent knives/holy water/certain spells). If I consciously try to aim, I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. If I just fling one, I can often hit a moving target at more than 30 feet. I usually can’t hit stationary targets to save my life, though I’m getting better. I suppose my hands know calculus that my brain’s forgotten…
I’m the same way. People will ask me for a phone number and I’ll have to mock calling it in the air or on a counter or something before I can recite it.
Spelling is the same way. If someone asks me to spell a word, I have to write it out first, I can’t just do it verbally. I would suck at a Spelling Bee.
Then there’s driving. I keep my eyes and brain on the road, and, every once in a while, am amazed to discover that my hands and feet activated turn signals, switched gears, and proceeded to their destination while the brain was watching out for impediments and not directing them.
Guitar. A friend of mine is teaching herself and wanted me to give her the tablature for a couple of songs I know well, so she could learn them. I thought it would be easy, just writing out what fret on which string to play, but I had to stop every three notes and play the whole thing through to make sure I was doing it right. My fingers just move on the strings, my brain doesn’t guide them, so when I try to bring my brain into it I get all confuzzled.
I can tie a tie with and without a mirror, but it seems I can only tie a double-Windsor knot anymore.
I shave in the shower without a mirror. My hands trace my face and find spots to clear.
Massage. I’ve told people this: I massage in my sleep. It might no tfit the OP, as I do give it some thought when giving someone a massage on purpose, but for the most part, my mind knows what feels good and tracks knots and things and the hands just work at them.
I can draw my pistol blind and have my rounds hit the paper (though not always COM.) That’s more pratice though, I suppose.
“Me too” on the musical instuments, for me the flute and saxaphone. I haven’t played since college, but if I pick up a flute I can run the scales, provided I don’t think about it too much. If I think about it, I’m lost.
I’ve taught a couple people to knit. While the actual stitches are clear in my mind (because, depending on the yarn, I have to check every so often that I am not splitting it, and so get a visual cue) I cannot explain how I wind the yarn through my left fingers to keep the tension without actually doing so. No, that’s wrong. I just thought about it, and I can imagine it, but in doing so, my hand assumes the appropriate position and I can “feel” the yarn winding around.
I once had a friend ask me to help her with her sewing machine. She couldn’t get the bobbin thread to come up. I watched her, and couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong, so I sat down and threaded the machine. As I did so, she exclaimed, “You turned the wheel backwards to pull the thread up!” Which, of course, was news to me.
I believe in muscle memory.
I can type,dial the phone,knit and play the piano without looking.
It’s a joke with my best friends that I can talk to them and dial Stinky Paws’ number (my 15 digit calling card number, followed by his 10 phone number)left handed, and not looking at the phone.
I also give very good massages. So good my IRL friends won’t let me touch their boyfriends. I gave my Friend’s boyfriend a neckrub, with her permission, and when he moaned, she made me stop.
Kung fu (well I guess that’s more than just hands. But damnit I’m gonna post it anyway :)). That’s kind of the very purpose of martial arts training though, you aren’t supposed to need to think about it. I just react the way I do in practice, no matter what.
Also, ditto on the piano playing. Typically, I will be able to play something from memory long before I will be able to consciously think about and play at the same time. There’s this one song that I play that I’ve had at performance level for over a year and just now can I think about the stuff while I play it.
Typing, most definitely. Looking at the keyboard only slows me down. I once knocked a glass of water into a previous one, and dismantled it in hopes of it drying out successfully (it never did work again); when it came time to put it back together, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out which keys went where beyond qwerty. I had to put my fingers over the keyboard stubs and go through the motions.
I’ve completely forgotten oft-called friends’ phone numbers, and only got them back into explicit memory by closing my eyes, not thinking about it, and just dialing.
When returning to some old computer games, I often find I know just what to do even when I don’t consciously remember the details of the level.
I can play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata if I don’t think too hard. I’ve never had lessons and I can’t read music, so I’m stuck with that one piece though.
Put me down for typing, knitting, and crochet, I’m much slower at all three if I look at my hands. And like robinh said, if you asked me to tell you how to thread my sewing machine, I couldn’t tell you. But if I just sit down and don’t engage my brain, things go smoothly. Also if you ask I can’t think of the alarm code for the house or the keypad code for the van, but if I’m standing there my fingers know what to do.