I mean, what’s something you can do that people are like, “really? You know how to do that?”
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I can click my tongue really, really loud. Like a baseball hitting a bat hard. Aside from making people jump, I have yet to find any practical use for this talent.
Learn how to echolocate!
Lol I thought you meant eat chocolate.
I know how to spin a laptop on my finger
That’s aggressively anxiety inducing more than surprising
I could do that, but probably only once.
That is cool. Maybe don’t tho.
In this economy?
I never forget a face
I never forget a face but damn if I can remember their name. Drives my wife nuts, when she asks me who that was
I’m a huge guy, 6’8" and immensely heavy, people do a double take when I tell them I can and do windsurf.
Cooking. IDK why but everyone assumes I don’t know how to cook. I must fit a stereotype or something. The last time I lived alone I cooked (or had leftovers of something I cooked) every night for like 8 months. I tell people that and they are always surprised. It’s a big reason I hate living with roommates because the kitchen situation is so chaotic I can’t really do that anymore.
Same, and especially baking bread, which people seem to think is an involved, laborious process that requires dedication and being obsessed. I learned it on youtube lol. Making a loaf of really good bread takes like 10 minutes of actual work; the rest of the time it’s making itself.
Depends on unexpected for who. Most native english speakers seem surprised when they realise I understand “big words” (read: any word with a Latin root) without needing to look up a definition. To me it’s pretty obvious. My native tongue is Spanish. Having an accent doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.
English speaker here, it’s especially true of technical words because science draws on Latin so much for terminology. Also, after 2 years of Latin in high school and then studying Spanish in college, I found a lot of Spanish words easy to guess.
Examples?
I remember this teacher in particular who was explaining something and said “dissipate”. He paused and picked me out of the group, for no apparent reason, and asked if I knew what dissipate meant. I said yes. So he asked me to explain, which I did, and he looked surprised and said something like “you’re on fire” or similar and carried on.
That particular example stuck with me because of his condescending tone and for pointing the spotlight to me gratuitously, but I’ve had many, less memorable ones. It’s not the words that I remember after a while, but that they presume I don’t understand the meaning of a word apparently unusual for them. “Melancholy” and “quotidian” come to mind too.
On the same vein, I also surprise English speakers when reading, writing and understanding scientific names. Not all of course, but many are descriptive of the creature they refer to if you know a latin language. What’s often a mouthful of nonsense for native English speakers can sometimes be meaningful to me.
Ah ok. Makes sense.
Thanks for responding :)
I’m able to forget most things my dad says … he has an opinion of everything and will babble for 20 minutes about stuff no one else in the house cares about.
Also, I can picture a blueprint in 3d.
Compared to most people, I know a fuck ton of keyboard shortcuts making me look like a computer wizard.
I’ve been criticized for that, lots of people say “use the mouse, it’s better”. I say “how is it better?”. They say “it just is”.
The truth is that they can’t do the keyboard shortcuts and are jealous.
I’m certainly no vim wizard but just knowing a good number of shortcuts really saves time doing precise clicks and selections with your mouse
I have an uncanny ability to read super faded receipts, and old people’s hand writing.
I know how to can food and make preserves. I’m 46 M.
Somehow, it’s a surprise to people that I’m a competent trumpet player. As if every high school in the state doesn’t have a band class. Fully half of my graduating class in high school were musicians of some kind between chorus, orchestra and band classes. But somehow nobody expects a random dude in his mid-30’s to pick up a trumpet and play a few bars of Ravel’s Bolero.
I can put a needle in any body cavity (of someone else). Or a wire or a catheter. Besides the skull and a few more delicate ones I also know how to do that without actually killing the person. Well,at least not “certainly” killing… accidents happen.
I’m pretty old & geeky so people are often surprised I can do a great cartwheel. One trick pony when it comes to acrobatics, it’s just the cartwheel.
I’m a massive nerd, no one is surprised by my ability to debug a printer or install an operating system.
They’re generally surprised by my people skills and carpentry skills though!
People are surprised that I can jodel a bit. My geeky high-schools self worked hard to build this skill.
