[QUOTE=Hostile Dialect]
Ah, but can you swim above water without holding your nose?
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Sorta. (I taught myself, so my technique is lousy, but I can stay afloat.)
I’m in grad school now, and I’ve been distressed to discover I can’t speak up in class without first rehearsing what I want to say in my head several times. I’m envious of those who can engage in lively debates in class, because by the time I know what I want to say, the conversation has turned to something else. If I have to speak without preparation, I’m an incoherent mess.
[QUOTE=Lillith Fair]
I’m a pretty good musician so I can read all the notes and stuff. I’m an organist, so I can read three lines-both clefs and the third line being the pedal. But for the life of me I can’t read open score for the choir. I can usually handle three parts, but add the fourth one and I’m done for. You have to transpose the tenor line down an octave in your head. Damn! It’s hard!
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This reminded me…I can sight-read music as fluently as I read words, but I cannot memorize music to save my life.
The two-fingered whistle and snapping my fingers. I guess I’m just no-good at attracting attention to myself.
Oh, and you can probably add cartwheels of any type to the list. I never tried as a kid (believe it or not) and I’m too old and stiff to even think about it now, dagnabbit!
Swallow carbonated beverages without holding them in my mouth for a few seconds. This is not an exaggeration of time; it’s about 3 to 4 full seconds. I think I need time for the fizziness to go away, or something.
It’s a good thing I don’t much care for those kinds of drinks, as I doubt it’s a great idea to bathe your teeth in them like that.
Do a running dive into a swimming pool. I can dive if I squat down and roll myself forward with my hands in front of me, but that run-jump-dive is beyond me.
[ul]
[li]do the two-fingered whistle (despite many times slobbering on my fingers trying)[/li][li]Turn a cartwheel (just can’t get my legs up enough)[/li][li]some simple math (if I think about it for longer than a second I won’t get it and will need a calculator, while breaking out in a cold sweat)[/li][/ul]
Let me add one for my husband - he cannot float in water (or in the air, either, but that’s not important right now). I know when most people hear that, they think, “Well, everyone can float a little; are you sure you’re doing it right?” I have worked with him extensively on this - the man is made of solid granite - he does not float AT ALL. Ever. If you put a scuba on him, he could go sit on the bottom of the pool until the air ran out.
I CAN NOT switch gender pronouns in conversation. It’s a nightmare trying to say “He said that to her because he thinks his is better than hers.” I usually just give up and stick to one gender throughout, turning the minority gender into the other one. Rarely does this confuse, often does this amuse.
As others said, I can’t shuffle cards, belch on command (unless I take a gulp of pop), or do the two-fingered whistle.
Other things? I can’t drive, I cannot do a proper dive into a swimming pool (at least not from a diving board-I can do the shallow dive thing). Oh, and I can’t sing, and I suck at math.
(Oh, and from what I heard, curling one’s tongue is a genetic thing. True?)
[QUOTE=Crawlspace]
I can’t bend the distal joints of my pinkies without also bending my ring finger, and there’s not much strength to the bend until the middle fingers get involved. It’s supposedly one of those genetic things.
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You can overcome it with finger exercises. My husband did; I almost have. I started using one of these things after I broke my third metacarpal in a car accident. Luckily my husband had one already around - it’s how he became able to move his pinky independently for guitar work.
I can do the two-fingered whistle with my thumb and index finger (hrm…guess that would be the thumb and finger whistle…) but I never mastered the no-fingered whistle, like you see cowboys doing when herding cattle.
I didn’t learn to swallow pills until I was in my early 20s.
Like others, I can’t drive a stick (never learned), I can’t do basic math in my head and while I did learn the multiplication tables in grade school, I’ve forgotten them over the years.
I have never been able to touch my toes without bending my knees, even when I was young and athletic.
I can’t pronounce ambulance or antibiotic as most people do, usually stressing the wrong syllable even when I try to get it right.
Never realized so many people couldn’t do that. I feel better now.
All those with problems popping pills – what you have is a heightened Gag Reflex. This article purports to suggest a way of moderating it; in addition to the warnings within, I’ll add my own caveats that IANAD; I ran into this article doing a Google search and have no idea how accurate, safe or wise it is; don’t take medical advice from strangers, etc…
Iron a shirt or pair of pants. I suppose it’s willful ignorance as much as anything else - I’ve never sat down and learned, but it seems hopelessly daunting to me.
But I can snap my fingers, whistle, gargle, swallow pills, roll my Rs, roll my tongue, speak articulately off the cuff, ride a bike, drive a stick shift and do a decent cartwheel (at least I could 40 pounds ago), so…
(I taught myself, so my technique is lousy, but I can stay afloat.)
– what you have is a heightened 