For me it’s sports in general, and football in particular.
Every so often someone in my life will make a football reference: say they’re going to punt something, or refer to the rivalry between Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers or the — okay, those are the only two NFL teams I know by both mascot and location. Being a great big nerd I am frequently must explanation, but the acquired knowledge never sticks, because I just don’t care enough about football, or any sport not spelled “chess,” to dedicate precious brain space to it.
What about the rest of you? What did you never learn in school, know nothing about now, and foresee yourself remaining uninformed about until death?
Well, does it need to be something we WANT to learn more about?
Because I know nothing about sports, nor do I want to.
But if we’re talking about fascinating things I haven’t gotten around to learning about, it would have to be computers and computer programming. I run Linux, but I don’t know computers… I hack at them through trial and error until something works, or do whatever research I need to do to fix a specific problem. But I’ve entertained fantasies about knowing Linux through and through, understanding computers, being able to build my own code, that kind of thing.
Wait if we are talking about things we want to learn, then scratch mine. I don’t want to or need to learn about ballroom dancing. I thought the OP wants things we don’t know about and won’t for life.
It can be things in either category. I sometimes think that I should learn more about football and baseball, but I don’t really care to, and I know little and care less about, oh, cricket. But I’d like to be able to read ancient Aramaic and Greek. Any of those would be acceptable.
Gaming- and by that I mean the computer games that require super mac-daddy high powered systems, and eat up hours, days, even years of some peoples’ lives. I guess it’s an indication that I’m actually aging, because I assume that if I was a teenager in these times, rather than 39, I’d probably be really into it. But it’s a culture I know nothing about, and one in which I have absolutely no interest in having my ignorance fought.
Taxes, money and accounting.
My plan to balance my checkbook was to earn as much as I could and spend as little as possible. Paying my taxes involved taking any scrap of paper looking remotely official and hoarding it in a box and presenting it at my mom’s feet annually. (She majored in accounting and my aunt has an accounting business.) Drachillix says that I need to make my own car payments and write the monthly rent check so he can concentrate on his computer repair business. When did he stop loving me?
I have 2 college degrees and hold an active RN license and I hate money stuff.
Advance Physics and Math. I only got as far as Calc I and I regret not having gone any further. I have no need for it and I am unlikely to pick it back up at this point, but I once considered becoming a Math Teacher, so it feels like I left something unfulfilled.
I used to be a fair driveway mechanic, but I gave it up when carburetors went away. I am very ignorant of modern cars.
I have so much more to learn about history, I have barely scratched the surface. The more I read, the more I realize how much more there is to know.
This is tough; I would love to be a true renaissance man. Men like Franklin, Galileo, Da Vinci are my heroes. I want to know as much as possible. This is a large part of why I love the SDMB so much. You never know what will be discussed.
Sports. Everything about sports has passed me by, and I can’t summon up enough interest to care about them. The nadir of my broadcasting career is when my first program director required me to read the sports on the noon newscast. I had to compile it, too. Have you ever had to talk about something for five minutes, in front of thousands of people, about which you know absolutely nothing? Daily? It was one of the most excruciating episodes of my life.
Politics. I thought maybe I would take an interest in them as I got older, but it isn’t happening. If ever I read about politics, the letters start to wobble and fall into a heap of alphabet soup at the bottom of the page. I don’t come from political people, and we were never taught about the system in school. I don’t know the difference between left and right, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, any of it. I believe this will prevent me from becoming an American citizen. I would definitely fail the civics test, and I could not declare myself to be a member of any party.
Cars. I’ve never had a license. It wasn’t necessary, because where I used to live, there was excellent public transit. I haven’t been behind the wheel since 1975. I could never have afforded a car, anyway, so it was moot to begin with. Now, we remark on how much money it saves us because I don’t have a car, and I feel better about it. I can’t see ever getting one, or learning to drive. I know nothing of mechanics. My interaction with cars is limited to putting gas in them.
Having read McNew’s post, I have to say about gaming - me, too. I haven’t played a video game since Pong. The whole culture came into existence and became the multibillion dollar business phenomenon it is without my even noticing. I was already an adult when video games came along, and nobody I knew was into them, either, so they never had an impact on me or my friends.
Poker. I’d love to be able to play, but I can not keep the rules straight in my head, and I can never remember what makes up a good hand or what hand beats what hand.
And sadly, music. I LOVE music. I so wish I could play an instrument - ANY instrument. I have had lessons on various instruments, I have had countless people try to teach me to read music, and I am utterly hopeless. I really feel like I am missing some “aha” thing, that if I keep trying, eventually something is bound to make sense to me, and that something will make everything else snap into place.
I’m no sort of handyman at all (fixing things, carpentry, plumbing, etc.). Fortunately I have a
friend who is and is capable of helping me out when necessary. Guess I’m way over on the
“theoretical” side of the spectrum (vs. applied or experimental)…
Celebrity gossip. Of course, it’s impossible to escape it totally, what with colleagues/friends talking, supermarket tabloids lurking at you while you’re waiting in line and that stupid, stupid stuff too often finding its way into real news. But I really don’t give a schmuck about whether Brad fucks Britney or whatever and whether Dumb Blondie has a new bra size or is on the verge of brankruptcy or drinks vodka every two days, and I can’t for Og almighty figure why so many people do.
On the other hand, I want too learn all about classical philosophy and literature but the task is so intimidating that I might never undertake it.
Are you me? (Except I know you’re not, cause I am a musician!) I have had poker explained to me several times, and I cannot for the life of me understand it. I HATE poker-playing scenes in movies (I didn’t see the new James Bond movie solely because I read a review that said the poker scene was a little long) because I can’t figure out what the hell is happening!
Anyway, I will say computers. I know how to USE a computer fine. But if I wanted to BUY a computer (I’ve had four computers in my life, but I’ve somehow managed to avoid the shopping and purchasing part), I wouldn’t be any better off than my mom, who still can’t figure out how to copy and paste.
I know next-to-nothing about philosophy. Yeah, I can name philosophers and the ideas they were known for, and yeah, I’ve slogged through Neitzche and a couple of others, but none of it ever stuck.
I’ve always said that it’s because my mind isn’t set up to deal with philosophy. I’m very impatient with it because it’s always struck me as a waste of time. Who gives a shit* why *we exist and who the hell decided that there has to be a “meaning” to life, anyway?
I’m also painfully ignorant of higher mathematics. Numbers don’t make much sense to me as they are, let alone when they’re subsituted by letters and arcane symbols.
This ties in, I suppose with my ignorance of philosophy, 'cause once String Theory and speculation about the nature of matter in other areas comes into the conversation, my eyes glaze over. Tell me what the telescopes have discovered and I’m eager and fascinated, but when you start talking about dimension and bends in space-time, my brain shuts down. Discussions of the possibility and nature of anti-matter sort of strike me as being in the same fashion as people who used to debate how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. (My ignorance-- I know.)
I, too, know very little about sports or the culture surrounding them. Again, lack of interest because it seems completely pointless except as a means of temporary entertainment. In that vein, I’m also ignorant of the new musicans,** movie stars **or other celebrities unless their doings happen to have leeched into the mainstream “news”.
I know just enough about a lot of things to know I’m not interested in learning more about them. Like programming. Or math-y stuff. Or early American literature. There’s a bunch more, too.
When people start talking about electricity, something shuts off in my brain. Voltage, amperage, wattage, wires, outlets, grounds, 3-phase, 4-phase, I don’t understand it. I’ve been told and told and told, but I don’t understand it.
I thought the OP wants things we don’t know about and won’t for life.