Stuff you can't do

What is something that everyone can do, but you can't?

drive

I cannot hold a lit cigarette in my mouth for ANY amount of time without completely freaking out (choking, shaking my head violently, spitting it out). Like can't even tie my shoe laces with my cigarette in mouth. Instead I have to find somewhere to rest the cigarette. Watching Slash footage as a teen just left me spellbound. The ability to smoke a cigarette hands-free was nothing less than a superpower in my view.

Also, I can't whistle with my fingers. So jealous of those who can.

Any card game more complicated than Go Fish or War

is it because the smoke gets in your eyes? i used to hold french fries in my mouth like cigarettes when i was a kid. always looked really cool- thinking of solid snake in that opening scene of metal gear solid 2. i can't whistle at all and it sucks. but i've got a good right hand thumb snap

xp

yes, it's the smoke. i don't know how some people deal with it.

and i've always felt so bad for people who can't whistle at all! that sucks.

play the guitar

pick a wet noodle up off of the floor

Make small talk for more than ten minutes.

yes, it's the smoke. i don't know how some people deal with it.

yeah i couldn't do this w/o the smoke getting in my eyes for several years, then suddenly i could do it. helps a lot when it gets really cold

and i've always felt so bad for people who can't whistle at all! that sucks.

i hate it

play the guitar

practice makes purple!

Ha I share the card game problem with Iago. "Here, sit down, it takes 5 minutes to learn." Still completely lost an hour later. Worst part is, if I'm playing a game with teams/partners, my partner is getting legit ticked off even though I made it abundantly clear from the beginning that I suck at card games.

drink coffee. I love the taste but it exacerbates my Crohn's to a degree that I can't have even one sip.

handstand. Even against a wall.

Origami

Drive, swim and, until this year aged 40, ride a bike

Roll my 'R's
Drive

Opening brand new plastic grocery bags.

can't drive, can't do the finger whistle, can't make myself burp

actually I can drive but the Man won't let me have a licence

even

ledge - briskly rub your palms on either side of the bag, it helps separate the sides. Unless you do that already and find the knack evades you.

Roll my 'R's
Drive

― Transform All Suffering Into Poo (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 14 December 2016 08:47 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Both of these actually. Also, put contact lenses in. Actually had a small crowd round me in the opticians the last time I tried to go through this whole process. In the end the optician said 'well people do get used to it, but in your case maybe stick with the glasses', as I staggered out of the shop looking like I'd been on a five day whisky bender tour of funerals.

Opening brand new plastic grocery bags

wet your fingertip first

Since I hit my mid thirties I've learned that I can't stay up late. I fall asleep at 9-11 o'clock, no matter where I am. If I can't sleep, I just hunker in a corner and get grumpy and dozey . Even if I'm with people I adore, in a place I love, I conk out once the sun goes down.

Also, I can't put up with cigarette smoke. It's not a pose or a demonstrative disgust, either, but a legit nausea and cough that comes over me when I'm in a smoky place. It's what made me quit smoking over a decade ago, and I worry that my friends think I'm a Puritanical ninny. But the smell actually kind of overwhelms me, and I feel like I'm being pesticided when I can't get fresh air. Bleach, chlorinated pools, and dry-erase markers do the same thing to me.

actually I can drive but the Man won't let me have a licence

this too although it was almost 20 years ago I gave up trying so yeah probably can't drive

maintain a healthy weight

Drive.

yeah the weight thing, yeah I stopped driving lessons 5 years back

I can't roll my Rs either, this fits in with not being able to do accents, whistle or hold notes - my voice is spectacularly unmalleable, I hate it

Can't drive but hardly anyone I know can
Can't swim but am sure I could with lessons and practise
Can't ride a bike and honestly no fucking idea how it's even possible

Can't blow up balloons! Actually I think this fits into the whistling thing

Oh and still can't cook but luckily don't have to :)

I'm with Lex on four of the above - drive (passed test at second attempt (on rural backroads of Cumbria) at age 28, never drove again), swim (freaked out at prospect of pool lessons age 9, haven't been in more than four feet of water since), cycle (it's genuinely impossible - y'all have onboard gyroscopes or something), blow up balloons (the material of the balloon itself obstructs the passage of air - again, there must be some exo-corporeal shenanigans going on; it's not technique, people have an extra bit to their mouth that they're not telling me about).

I failed my test about 6/7 times in Ireland but I maintain that I can drive. There was an 18-month gap between tests and it had no standardisation. I can cycle I guess but don't want to, I would be dead in a week. Don't trust my attention span.

Can't touch my toes. I guess lots of people can't but even when physically fit I can't - I am incredibly inflexible, think it must be just by birth or maybe due to chronic illness, it's not even that I can't touch my toes, my hands barely go past my knees. I have really tight hamstrings.

Those of you who say you can't drive: Let's say you're by yourself, on the outskirts of town, holding the keys to a Porsche 911. Your spleen suddenly ruptures. You need to get to the hospital, and you know where it is. Do you mean to tell me you can't get there? (I'll even give you an automatic transmission.)

The cycling thing is blowing my mind!

remember my own phone number

Oh, I think I can remember how to make a car *go*, maybe even *stop*, and steering is no problem. It's just negotiating traffic (gears and clutch too, I guess, but that muscle memory would come back I s'pose). I moved to London a few months after I passed my test (on very un-London roads) and I thought "I will never drive here".

Another vote for whistling and rolling Rs. I can't roll my tongue either; that was a thing in school for a while. But I can blow up balloons. Can't touch my toes unless I do it Chris Waddle-style (ie. bend yr knees). I am a spectacularly poor swimmer and would drown if in trouble, but I can move through water under my own power for short distances. Recently discovered I could do this on my back with a 2-year-old sitting on my chest. But only for about 15 feet.

I think I'm right in saying cars with automatic transmission are much more common in the US than the UK (xxxp) Not that I know anything about cars tbh.

Opening brand new plastic grocery bags

wet your fingertip first

Thing is it usually happens with binbags when I've just taken out the gross old one and don't really want to be licking my fingers.

briskly rub your palms on either side of the bag

will try this one neat trick

blow up balloons (the material of the balloon itself obstructs the passage of air

vigorously stretching the neck of the balloon multiple times is my pro tip.

I happen to know that Ledge is not a pro-blower.

o_O

with plastic bags there is normally an overlap on one of the sides to make it easier to open

I can't burp. Not like a normal person, anyway. People have given me shit about it for years and insisted I just wasn't trying. But I've tried, damn it. It just comes out as a feeble croak, and then everyone laughs at the big dumb asshole.

I can't dance in a prescribed way. More broadly, I think I'm distinctly deficient in kinesthetic intelligence because I never seem to be able to make my body move in the way that someone else is telling me to make it move. I took a ballroom dancing class in college and it was a disaster.

I can't burp. However I have put zero effort in ever trying to learn.

Likewise myself and tying a necktie.

whistle. snap my fingers. ride a bike.

i can't do the spock hand thing

I can't wink.

I mean I can't do a subtle, genuine wink. I come from a great line of winkers, my dad and granddad were excellent in subtle winks (ie. if my little brother was telling a story we all knew was false or exaggerated, he'd throw me a real quick wink that spoke of an understanding between the both of us. I liked those winks).
If I wink it's a gross spectacle, it's a dirty, fat wink entirely useless for my subtlety repertoire.

have a relaxed conversation about myself and my life

Open a bottle of wine; create a proper fireplace fire; cook

I can't tie any kind of knot.

Yes, apart from shoelaces, and crap knots that either unravel immediately or are impossible to untie.

Step one: place length of string or rope in a backpack.
Step two: walk around for like half an hour.
Step three: marvel at the knot that your backpack has tied for you.

(I'm assuming here that these instructions apply to more than just headphones.)

whistle
and uh never learned how to ride a bike

Whistle or snap my fingers.

That's Tuomus out of the running for the boyband I'm forming then.

In cooking, I can improvise decently well. (Pastas, pizza, stir fry, grilling, breakfast foods, chili, all turn out fine. But if I try to follow a recipe, something goes haywire.

Exact opposite here. I have enough skill to follow a recipe but conjuring a meal out of a fridge full of ingredients (or half full, or almost empty) is an ability that fascinates and baffles me.

put olive oil in a pan. heat pan. add stuff. season to taste. eat. it's easy!

driving (an automatic) is pretty easy, guys -- you just sit down, point it and press your foot

― mookieproof

for the record, mookieproof is lying here. i've been driving for, like, close to 20 years now and i still nearly hit somebody every time i try to drive anywhere.

not lying, but this thread does raise the question of whether music appreciation crowds spatial awareness out of peoples' brains

Also, put contact lenses in. Actually had a small crowd round me in the opticians the last time I tried to go through this whole process. In the end the optician said 'well people do get used to it, but in your case maybe stick with the glasses', as I staggered out of the shop looking like I'd been on a five day whisky bender tour of funerals.

― Fizzles

loooooool

i lol because i know exactly what you mean. helping people struggle to learn how to put contacts in must be the #1 worst thing about working at an optometrist.

Opening brand new plastic grocery bags

^^^all neat tricks suggested itt already known to me, and imo useless (in the day when humans wore wristwatches, my natural static field always caused them to stop: perhaps it also keeps plastic bags stuck shut)

(ledge: with binbags, always try to choose the ones which have built-in "handles" to carry and tie, they open much easier)

I've never been able to blow bubblegum or wolf whistle.

not lying, but this thread does raise the question of whether music appreciation crowds spatial awareness out of peoples' brains

― mookieproof

i'm assuming most people here are much better drivers than me given the way people here react to the prospect of self-driving cars. it does make me that much more dangerous to have music on when i'm driving, though.

A: throwing a ball remotely accurately (i can throw it fast but there's no controlling what direction it will go)
B: hitting a ball with a bat or racket or club or mallet (exception: oddly enough as a kid i was quite good at hockey the two or three times i got to play it)
C: i can catch a ball though, in including now and then cricket balls hit really quite hard from not far away, so that i wished i hadn't

re B: i don't mean i tend to mis-hit and thus can't control direction, i mean i most likely miss it altogether

all of these are far worse now that i am aged and broken-winded but they were never good

never learned how to dive off a diving board

I can dive from the pool ledge or the 1 meter board, but lack the technique or am too afraid of hurting myself to dive from anything higher.

I have *jumped* off a 10 meter board or from a cliff up 65 feet above water. But why can almost everyone else do this with their hands up in the air without getting a noseful of water upon splashdown which is really painful? I have to squeeze my nose with one hand to avoid that, which looks wimpy and isn't as much fun. I've tried noseclips - they work fine for swimming but most will fall off at impact if you jump from a great height.

drive
see properly
hear properly
think anything without having to fucking say it out loud

Some of my earliest memories are of my parents throwing me on a bike at a very young age (maybe three?), and taking me to a local beach to learn to swim around that same time. If it wasn't for their persistence I wouldn't know how to do either activity, as I haven't rode or swam in like 25 years.

As for driving, I grew up in one of the worst cities in America for getting around without a car so there was never really a choice about learning to drive. I cannot drive stick, however.

i'm guessing mark has a wicked sinker just waiting to be born . . .

stuff nerds can't do...

not lying, but this thread does raise the question of whether music appreciation crowds spatial awareness out of peoples' brains

― mookieproof

my girlfriend agrees with you

look people in the eye
cook
dance competently

oh I also learned a couple summers ago that I am totally incapable of hitting a baseball with a bat

I can dive from the pool ledge

good to know

all of these things come with practice except opening plastic bags

it's true my lack of knack in this area has only been confirmed

briskly rub your palms on either side of the bag

nope

always try to choose the ones which have built-in "handles" to carry and tie, they open much easier

nope

(ybbmv)

Have used the Peter Cook method ever since seeing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0d_DncYbfM

bike non-riding does seem to be a thing amongst people i know. i wonder what the reason is? growing up somewhere where it wasn't safe to learn?

part of me wants to spend an hour or so running behind these people on a boris bike but i figure those things are probably over-heavy.

(that said, it has been years since i've ridden a bike. i might disprove the aphorism)

I don't think I learned to ride a bike till one time we went to Millport, must have been for the weekend, never rode a bike at home. Don't know why.

... probably a safety issue, nowhere to ride a bike really ;_;

the not riding a bike thing is crazy to me. I don't know if I know a single person who doesn't know how to ride a bike in real life. It's a pretty essential skill between the ages of 8 and 14.

Then again, I am Canadian and can just barely ice skate, so I probably shouldn't judge.

I didn't ride a bike til I was like 12 or something.

i can't drive or cook! wonder i'm still breathing

Make small talk for more than ten minutes.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, December 14, 2016 12:45 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this. 10 minutes would be an accomplishment

oh I also learned a couple summers ago that I am totally incapable of hitting a baseball with a bat

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.)

i played little league for like five years and never hit a baseball once during that time.

bike non-riding does seem to be a thing amongst people i know. i wonder what the reason is? growing up somewhere where it wasn't safe to learn?

― koogs

nah i grew up in a perfectly safe environment and everybody else in my town could ride bikes, i could just never get my balance straight. didn't learn to tie my shoelaces until i was in fourth grade or learn to swim until i was in seventh grade either.

I have ridden a bike maybe five times in my life. I'm 46 and grew up in suburban Australia (and am physically able). How did I let this happen?

omg can i tell you that i can small talk for like five hours. ppl think i'm being disingenuous when i ask about their vacuum cleaner but i really want to know!

look people i don't know in the eye

Im here to tell you that "you never unlearn/forget how to ride a bike" is BS. I rode everywhere as a 12-18 year old, then promptly stopped completely (interstate move, never bought an adult bike).

I bought a bike last year, and to my utter, utter humiliation, discovered I could not ride the fucking thing. I wobbled, I panicked, I had no spatial awareness, I felt like I'd fall off. It was fucking horrible and Ive never got back on since :(

Skate. Embarrassing as my parents were both skaters and I literally would not be here but for skating.

I keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Deltron 3030's "Things You Can Do"

surm, I have this really cool hoover that looks like a spaceship and floats on air like a hovercraft as you pull it across the room

I love small talk too! The minutiae of everyday life often makes for more illuminating conversation than seemingly weightier subjects

I keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Deltron 3030's "Things You Can Do"

― Neanderthal

oh good it's not just me

Driving might be easy but passing a (UK) driving test is not. That said a lot of people seem to be able to pass it. I gave it a good crack imo, but after the ridiculous reason I was given when I failed the last one it was clear they had a poster of me on the wall of the test centre with "DO NOT PASS THIS DANGEROUS MANIAC" on it.

― Transform All Suffering Into Poo (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 14 December 2016 17:17 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That would probably be justified in my case. I seem to have some sort of conceptual block - like some sort of fundamental failure to grasp the internal combustion engine. When going up a hill I would grip the steering wheel really hard and push. Spatial awareness was a bit of a problem and speed judgment nbd nbd. It's funny because on a bike I'm fine, alert and able to make good judgments - I think the fact the width conforms to the width of my body might have something to do with it, but perhaps also there's an element of not being good at the extension of power and body the car gives you.

Took my test, stalled a few times, including in a cross-hatched box junction. Seven major failures and countless minor. Including at one point the tester shouting STOP when I thought I could squeeze through a gap with oncoming traffic. At the end he said 'I suppose you know you've failed' and I said that I thought I'd done quite well on the theory, but he didn't find it funny.

surm, I have this really cool hoover that looks like a spaceship and floats on air like a hovercraft as you pull it across the room

I love small talk too! The minutiae of everyday life often makes for more illuminating conversation than seemingly weightier subjects

― Lee626, Friday, December 16, 2016 12:44 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

umm that sounds awesome. also best vacuum jingle!

surm <3

walk out
because I love you too much baby