I can't blow bubbles. I've had probably a dozen people try to teach me how that works, and I'm no closer to learning how than I was the first time I popped a stick of gum into my mouth.
For the longest time, I couldn't whistle, either. I still can't perform that piercing shriek-whistle that carries for a mile or more. But one day, without warning, I found myself whistling a tune, and then I was off and annoying. After a great deal of practice that drove everyone around me nuts over a period of years, I can perform a fair imitation of this:
(That's Roger Whittaker, whose songs filled my childhood. Yes, I was old before my time.)
Another thing I can't do: solve a Rubik's Cube. I'm lucky if I can get one side of the damn thing solved--my mind deals much better with words and abstractions than it does with concrete physical things. I went to school in grades four and five with the world champion Rubik's Cuber for his age group. He could solve a cube in something like fifteen seconds. I could sit and stare at it for fifteen years, it wouldn't make a difference. My solitary claim to Rubik fame: Once I sat directly on a Rubik's Pyramid.
Don't do this. Don't even think of doing this. The pointy points are very pointy. Like, rip right through your jeans pointy.
Let's see, everyone knows I can't drive...but few people know I can't type properly. I manage about forty five words a minute and I don't have to look at the keys, but my finger position is entirely wrong. I use, at most, four fingers. Trying to break me down and learn me up the proper way, at this point, is pointless. I've been typing this way since grade four and it works for me. It'd probably take shock therapy to reform me, and I doubt that'd even work.
I can't touch my toes unless I'm kneeling at the time. I have practically no flexibility in my muscles at all. This too is pretty much uncorrectable. Stretching will help a little, but not much. The problem is that I was born quite premature and spent the first six weeks or so of my life in an incubator. Nowadays, they perform all sorts of physical therapy on preemies. Not so in 1972. Doctors have explained that my stiff-as-a-boardness and my slightly lurching gait are permanent marks of that incubator. I have to say I felt much better once that explanation was given to me. For years, I'd try to tell people I just couldn't stretch and they'd accuse me of not trying hard enough. Karate class was an exercise in ritual humiliation.
What are some little things you can't do? Anyone?
7 comments:
Wow, six months, damn that's a long time.
Things I can't do... mmmhhhhh.
I can't do the rubik's cube either. I can't dunk a basketball... I can't spend money on frivilous things... I can't drink plain milk but I'll put it in my cereal... I can't listen to country music...
My mom just corrected me on that, and I can't believe I wrote it. It was six *weeks*, not six months. Still, it probably felt like six years, to them.
...so what happens when you try to drink plain milk? Is it the same as when I try to eat an olive, i.e., the thing gets halfway down my gullet and bounces right back up and out?
And as for country, are we talking Merle Haggard country or Taylor Swift country-pop? Or both and all? I don't like twang myself, but nowadays there's not much of that left.
I can't whistle either. Can't touch my toes neither (my excuse was i grew too fast, my muscles barely kept up with the bones. That's what a doctor told me. If I grew 5% faster, I would have been crippled).
I also am the proverbial white guy that can't jump. 6'6" and can't dunk. My hands are too small, can't palm a basketball properly.
Can't sing, can't draw, can barely write freehand. Anything slightly artistic is a huge effort for me.
45 words a minute typing? Don't fret it dude, that's damned good.
Good question, although I would never choose to listen to it, I can stomach the good old stuff like Willie, Cash, etc... The new stuff is total shiate.
Milk, I have just never liked the taste unless adulterated with chocolate or cereal, ick.
Oh, hell, I can't draw, either. Half the world thinks I have a great singing voice, the other half thinks it sucks like a Dirt Devil. As for the typing, I once met somebody clocked at 105 wpm. I think I could easily do sixty or seventy wpm if I could type properly...but the way I type, I'm maxed out.
Hey I learned the home row method, and I top out at 49 wpm. Just took a test recently. It involved reading text and retyping it. I think that slowed me down somewhat, as my own thoughts tend to tumble out faster. But it made for a good measurement of something I never really knew!
Post a Comment