music and other artistic talents. I’m completely inept at the creative stuff. I can’t play an instrument (not for lack of trying,) I can’t hardly draw a crooked line, etc.
Yeah - computers and phones. To me they are merely tools - like a car, that I wish to be able to use without needing to know too much about how they work, and how to update, program, or repair them. And I don’t need them to replace countless functions I can do absolutely fine with out them.
I play quite a bit of music, and have had it explained to me several times why different instruments play in different keys, but it just doesn’t stick. On a few topics like that I almost feel like subconsciously I’m intentionally remaining ignorant, refusing to internalize the explanations given me.
Math beyond trig, and physics. I can’t learn a thing about physics, and fortunately I don’t need to.
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The Moon. I don’t understand the phases, its effect on tides, etc. I can do the online research, but still haven’t.
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Color Memory. If I just watched a guy rob a bank, I’d probably get arrested as an accomplice. This is because I wouldn’t remember a) what color shirt/pants he was wearing, b) the color of the car that he drove away in, c) the color of my own shirt (without looking down).
Many more, but I can’t remember at the moment.
I’m completely non mechanical. I had trouble putting on a windshield wiper the other day.
I tested into Mensa several years ago.
I can barely do any math beyond simple algebra. I am terrible at navigation. I can’t do most household or car-related repairs. And in social contexts, I’m pretty bad at detecting sarcasm or irony.
Perhaps the largest gap in my knowledge that most ordinary people understand is politics. I have absolutely no clue what is going on in the world, what is going on in various showdowns throughout the country, and so on. Full disclosure: I never have felt that I could see through the marketing and smear campaigns to cast an educated vote, so I don’t vote. There. You can all smugly smile as you consider that.
Anything related to sports. When I hear folks discussing football or baseball or basketball or whatever, I am ignorant of any of the nuances in the sport and have no clue who is who.
Music frustrates me. Sure, as my username attests, I have studied jazz for many many years, but most talented musicians are far beyond my skill level by the time they are in high school.
These days I play bass, and I love it–no need for blistering riffs or crazy solos. But though I can read music, I still need to annotate every single page I will perform, so I don’t forget in the heat of the moment.
Real jazz cats have memorized hundreds if not thousands of songs, a feat that is unattainable by me.
I try to park my car in the same spot when I go grocery shopping b/c I keep losing my car too. This help me and I brought a window shade with Star War characters on it and put this up when the parking lot is really full . Harrison ford
save the day for me !
You and Willie Mays. He reportedly spent six months in daily company with his first biographer, then a few weeks later had to be re-introduced to him.
Not sure if “lacking a skill” counts in this thread, but as many have posted such I’ll note that I can’t play any musical instrument. At all. I can fake it on a kazoo. Which is odd for someone who (1) knows the classical and jazz canons well and (2) comes from such a family of musicians that our living room looks like a music store - 6’ grand, tuba, trombone, pocket trumpet, electric bass, upright bass, flute and bassoon. I think a recorder is in there somewhere. I try not to trip on any of them.
Anything to do with electricity more complicated than flip the switch to turn it on/off.
I cannot look at a circuit and figure out what it is meant to do, where the ground is, or how to not electrocute myself if I need to fix it.
Yard care - while my neighbors happily trim their bushes and plant their flowers, I think wild uncontrolled growth looks nice.
Finances - I’m good at math, but I fail at finances. I have no idea what “escrow” means, other than an account I can borrow money from in case I overdraw my checking account. I don’t know what the Wall Street figures mean. I don’t know if the Dow Jones number goes up whether it’s a good or bad thing. I have no idea how to make money from investing in stocks. I tried before and failed miserably.
Numbers. Math has always been a challenge for me but I’ve gotten better at it. Still, often I’ll be way the heck off with a number.
Like when my wife asked me “When do you suppose gas forced air was installed in our house?” I dunno, 10 years ago? We’ve been at the house 12 years and it was already there when we bought it…
Or once when I talked about my shorter sister and I said “Oh she comes up to here, she’s about 5’7.” She’s 3 inches shorter than my wife and my wife is 5’7. To my wife’s credit though, she’s got like 4 inches of attitude on top of that, so she seems taller.
I don’t even know much lower math. I went into computers because you only need to count up to 1.
Remembering seemingly random combinations of numbers and/or letters. Which is bad because I work with medical billing. I’m supposed to be able to remember if a code 99358 is payable when billed together with a 99205, and I can’t for the life of me without looking up what each code is.
Also, remembering people’s names. In my head, my grandboss is “the skinny birdlike one, feels a little dangerous, don’t quite trust her” and my greatgrandboss is “the heavyset blonde who’s always nice.” It’s been three years and I’m only now learning their names. (Neither one works out of my office.)
As has been well documented on these boards, I utterly suck at dating and relationships.
Oddly, I’m somewhat competent at most of the stuff mentioned in this thread. (Anybody want to trade?) I’m pretty good with math, science, and navigation. Used to play viola, and learning guitar. I can usually recognize people, and remember their names once I know them. I can’t describe people, though. That thing on Law & Order where the witness describes someone to a sketch artist (“oval-shaped face, and the eyes very far apart”, etc.) I would be hopeless at.
Oh!!! KEYS!!!
I have yet to have had anyone explain exactly what a musical key is and how it works and why it’s important and how you can tell one from the other, in a way that makes me understand it for more than 5 minutes after the conversation.
I’ve pretty much given up.
Social anything. Making new friends, talking to strangers at parties, all that sort of thing. Awkward R Us, I’m afraid.
Long division. You could lock me in a summer camp with the best mathematicians in the world doing nothing but long division for twelve straight weeks and I’ll have forgotten it all the day after I come back. I just can’t do it. Fortunately, I’ve never needed it since I left school so I don’t feel like I’m missing out 
Oh yes…a big one…
I’m face blind, not to the extent where I can’t recognize myself in a mirror, but if someone showed me a photo with me in a group, at an event I have forgotten, with other similar guys, I would probably not pick out my face.
One day I was reading a Scientific American article on this, and they had a test where they had a dozen or so faces with everything else cropped out (hair, clothing). I couldn’t recognize a single one. I showed it to my wife and she immediately named them all. They weren’t obscure people either “That one is Oprah. This is Bill Clinton…” and so on.
It’s not a big issue, since I have always had this and rely on stature, gait, voice, hair color, and other non-facial clues to help me. I work in a different state from the main office, so when I go there I am befuddled, relying on “I see everyone so rarely it’s hard to keep track” as my excuse for awkward moments in the hallway. Women are the most challenging since they make such dramatic changes to hairstyle and clothing.
But I always wonder what it would be like if I had this ability, sort of like Dorothy opening the B&W doorway into the colorful land of Oz. Maybe it’s like what tone-deaf folks feel about music. I’ll never know.
For me it’s the present date. If I ever have to sign and date anything, I always have to ask someone the date or look it up on my phone. I’m lucky to get the month right half the time, and sometimes it takes me a few seconds to even be sure of the year. Usually I can guess the day of the week but even that often takes a few seconds of hard thinking.
If I’m ever present during the commission of a crime I’d make a rubbish witness. I don’t have a problem recognizing people I’ve met, but describing strangers or acquaintances is virtually impossible for me. I’m always amazed by the detailed descriptions and facial composites of unidentified suspect that the police put out. I am virtually oblivious to face shapes, height, weight, hair color, hair length, eye color, facial hair, age, etc. For example, the last stranger I interacted with was the checkout lady at the grocery store just a few hours ago. I couldn’t tell you any more about her than that she was a white woman between 35 and 65 years old, without facial hair (I think I would have noticed) who is shorter than me (and I’m 6’2", so almost all women are shorter than me).