I’m pretty good at calligraphy.
I often get told that I am the fastest cashier anyone has ever encountered. Then I tell people “And you don’t know my secret.”
“What secret?”
“I only have one good hand.” I then tell them about snapping off my left wristbone.
I have to be the fastest only one good handed cashier in the world.
Whenever Zyada and I get separated in a store, she says she can find me just by listening for women laughing. It doesn’t work with men, but I don’t really care.
My other skill, developed many years ago and long lapsed, was a bar contest with a stubby beer bottle (like ginger ale/tonic/other mixers). Hold the bottle with your little finger underneath, put a quarter on top, walk your fingers up to turn the quarter over, and walk back down to the starting position. If you drop the quarter or the beer, buy a round and try again. I don’t think I ever lost.
I have prehensile toes.
Also preternaturally good peripheral vision. I can always tell when driving if something alarms Mrs. J., because I can detect her subtly clutching the passenger seat armrest (she insists I can’t possibly be watching the road to see it, but that’s untrue).
*she’s also highly impressed by the prehensile toes thing.
(This isn’t my personal claim, but I want to play too.)
“Danny’s only a man. But he can break wind at both ends simultaneous - which is more, I reckon, than any god can do.”
Peachy Carnehan in “The Man Who Would Be King”
Voices: I can do convincing imitations of various cartoon characters including: Mickey Mouse, Bullwinkle, Pete Puma, Scooby Doo, Shaggy, Apu, Mr. Burns, Grandpa Simpson, Troy McClure, Sylvester, Dudley Do Right, Droopy, and Goofy to name a few.
I know Bruce Lee’s ‘one inch punch’, learned from one of Bruce’s students. Many a phone book has felt my fury
Nothing. Some not so unusual and some weird ones.
I speed read, and am apparently very quick at creative problem solving. I can get the 'read" on almost any situation/people very quickly. I can, but don’t, manipulate a lot of people this way, by figuring out what their collateral is and playing on it. At my job, I am very fast at thinking and speaking on my feet, and can usually frame things well.
Weirder:
I can wiggle my ears, and scalp/forehead. I can balance on a barrel.
Mine:
Spatial ability. Pullin has me beat, but I’m very good at backing a car into a space only by looking at the backup camera screen. I can back around corners and all kinds of things that way. On a business trip in France recently, we had a USA-sized rented SUV and the hotel parking lot was a teensy little thing squeezed in between buildings. One day the lot was full except for two spaces, and it was TIGHT. I volunteered to turn the truck around so it was facing out of the space so that in the morning our normal driver wouldn’t have to back out of the space, lot and down the very tight driveway (4 inches of clearance on both sides) into the street. Using the backup and side-view cameras, it took me two attempts and something like a 12-point turn, but I did it without touching any of the other cars.
My other is almost a super power that I rarely use but when I do it’s automatic and terrifying. Somehow I can radiate assassin-levels of anger/viciousness. I don’t remember the exact conversation but a few weeks ago I was joking with my husband and said something snarky to him and he stared at me and then shivered. He said I made the hair on the back of his neck rise.
And last summer one day the grocery store was jam-packed. We got caught in a tight crowd in the entry choke-point (they need to design these things better!) where I couldn’t even step forward, and some idiot behind me smacked his cart into the back of my ankles lightly. Then he did it again, harder. Without thinking, I spun around and snarled “Stop it!” with such venom that his eyes got huge and I think he nearly peed his pants.
Remembered another-
I can sleep for more than twenty four hours straight. Note- This means NO periods of consciousness, no getting up to snack, to use the bathroom etc.
Which leads me to- I can go more then twenty four hours without using the bathroom. My record for longest time without urinating is roughly 72 hours.
I can glance at a page and find all the typos.
Unless I typed the page.
I can toot my own horn.
I have incredible fashion sense. I can put items of clothing together that should not go well together, and yet make them work together. People have paid me to do this for them.
However, I do not give a rat’s ass how I look. As my sister once put it “You go around looking like an unmade bed.”
I have the superhuman ability to look rumpled in anything, even expensive designer clothes. Luckily, as a college prof, my salary isn’t affected by that.
I can play a horn with my own toot.
[sub]Probably[/sub]
Back in the days of 10 key adding machines, there was no one faster and I was ALWAYS 100% accurate in my tallying.
I can create any polyhedron (edges) out of bass wood sticks.
I can accurately and aesthetically kern any two characters in any typeface.
I can have an orgasm (with ejaculation) without an erection, and without touching my genitals.
I can make models. I’m not talking about building kits, I mean that with blueprints, drawings, or reference photos I can create a model from wood, acrylic, plastic, metal or what-have-you with nothing more than a decent machine shop (or maybe just the tools at my house). The skill is less in demand with the advent of 3D printers. As a matter of fact, 3D printers put me out of the business: My skills were more expensive than the twenty-something year old college kids, upstairs cranking out parts with our printers that didn’t my expertise and a machine shop to create. It’s OK though: I still keep my skills honed with my own projects…
Sometimes I can do that if the wind is right.
In really good at eyeballing whether or not a thing is straight, level, plumb, square or symmetrical.
That’s pretty cool. Our operations guy can do this and it’s impressive. He made a model of 1880ish doctors horse-drawn wagon last Christmas for a doctor friend of his. He saw a picture of it and thought it would be a pretty cool gift. He brought it in with the picture before he gave it to him, and we were like, “Um, you made THIS just from that one picture??” Granted, he has a pretty impressive workshop, but it’s all by hand, no printers, etc. We recently bought a small CNC machine for the lab, he was checking it out, I said, “You thinking about getting one for home?”, he shook his head and said, “No, that’s no fun.”