Is there something you're really good at, but never tell new friends etc. because...

[SaladandGravy]

... it sounds so highly unlikely you think people won't believe you?

I have one talent that sounds impossible (I may share later!!) but my great-grandma was about 4 feet nothing tall, not very agile but she could juggle with just about anything you could throw at her that she could physically hold (Diddy little hands too!). We used to just shout "oi Grandma" and throw 3 things at her. it was so funny, and she loved it too.

And my ex could turn a digestive biscuit 360° back to front and widthwaya without it breaking.

(Csn you tell I'm. bored?)

@Torunette

I can visualise.

Abstract data, relationships, networks, procedures, organisational structures, finance, narratives: I can generate an image in my head and walk around it, then tweak or reconstruct when I get more data.

So I can tell when something doesn't fit. I can also predict stress points and possible outcomes. So I have a reputation for being a bit of a seer, but it's nothing psychic; it's just that I've already plotted all the viable potential outcomes so I can see something coming a mile off.

My grand insight after doing this for nearly all my life is this: if something is a hideous mess and has been for a long time, it is generally because all the easy, a bit tricky, bloody awkward and unpleasant solutions have been tried, and the only possible solutions left are so unpalatable that no one wants to go there.

Until they have to because circumstances force it, and usually it involves a lot of pain and suffering.

I can do this too. I am really good at managing people...both the hard line and the gentler bits. I can see what needs doing and one way or another I can get people to do it. I used to get gunslinger management jobs where I worked. I wouldn't say I was hated but it didn't make me liked! I am also a supertaster.

So sad that a pp says German is dead in UK state schools. It was taught in my son's state school but not for his year group - he did Spanish and they only let people do one language for GCSE.

Yes, it is sad. I sometimes think the best combo in schools would be Spanish and German, ditching French! Spanish is definitely easier for beginners than French, because the pronunciation is so much more obvious. But many kids get French and Spanish mixed up a lot if they do both.

Learning Spanish has really brought home to me how difficult French is for a lot of people. My (excellent natural linguist) dd is doing Spanish A Level. She ditched French at the end of year 8, proclaiming it a ridiculously stupid language .

I’m massively fat, broke, live in a council house as a single mum and am 50.

I spent 10 years competing across Europe in various equestrian sports and am a particularly skilled dressage trainer.

I don’t mention it - because I see people look me up and down and sneer if I so much as mention the word horse.

@feathermucker

I'm tremendously quick witted and can think of funny and clever replies instantly.

Me too!

Oh me too. I've often called a situation with friends/family before it happens and get a funny feeling in my stomach when I 'predict' it

Mine isnt a stomach feeling it's more a deep knowing . It feels different to anything else. For years I thought I was only remembering the things that i was proved right on which is why i started writing it down. When I have that deep knowing feeling it ALWAYS comes true (have it about 2 or 3 times a year absolute max for context)

I'm really good at recognising where people come from in the world judging just their appearance and their accent. DH can't even distinguish the difference between southern and northern Irish accents!

@QueefofSheena

I’m memory woman, I can remember huge detail about things that happened years ago. It freaks people out.

And I can touch my nose with my tongue but I’m not sure if that’s unusual

Me too. I even can remember being potty trained. My memory is like a giant web and I can pull threads together, adding details of a particular day from 40 years ago and tell you what I was wearing.

Also, I can quote 'Aliens' almost line for line. And 'Room With a View'.

Oh I thought of another thing - I'm 50 and still very bendy. I can stand with both legs straight together, put my hands flat on the floor and bend my arms slightly. I once astonished a bunch of our friends when we played the cereal box game on NYE and I won by picking the remaining flat bit of cardboard off the floor with my teeth (which you have to accomplish with no bit of your body touching the floor except your feet).

@AngelicaSchuylerAndHerSisters

I am really good at talking to people. I can strike up conversations with anyone about anything and can always put people at ease. Everyone likes me. I get told lots of secrets and I’m regularly asked for help and advice about things

Me too. But I can still remember the one couple who I was forced to sit with for dinner (touring holiday) who I couldn't squeeze more than one word answers out of. They weren't rude or trying to be difficult. They just couldn't hold a conversation. And I couldn't get one out of them. So I got hammered instead 😂

I can't ever imagine a man with a first class degree thinking it was something awkward and not to mention it until directly ask!

@gingerhills

I have a photographic memory for faces. I have learned to pretend not to recognise people I don't know well as it freaks them out to have a stranger come up at a party and say, 'Hi we met on a train five years ago when we both helped that woman with her luggage.' No, they don't remember. Why should they?

Me too! It can be embarrassing which is why I don't tend to say anything. I did a test online a few weeks ago and scored 15/15 after seeing a new face for a few seconds then having to guess it out of around 8 other faces - it's fascinating. The professor studying it calls it being a super-recogniser!

Pressure and stress management is my talent
I will never ever lose my shit when things go badly wrong or if I'm frightened. I go into what I think of as The Zone, and there's no fear inside me, just logistics and management.
I trained a couple of years ago as an active shooter/terrorism inside coordinator - which basically means if I am involved in one of those incidents, I have a legal duty to use my training keep people safe and feed information back to the authorities in order to neutralise the threat.

It's not that I am fearless, I'm actually very sensitive and cry at sad adverts, it's just that I have some sort of delayed reaction to stress and fear. As soon as I'm safe again I cry my eyes out and cuddle the cat

I am incredibly good at getting lost. I can even get lost on journeys I have done every day for years. I have never met anyone as good as getting lost as me.

I can read an entire book page pretty much in one look. Only really my DH knows that because he didn't believe me and tested me. If only there was a job where that was a useful skill as it's completely useless in mine.

Brilliant thread!

I've an amazing memory for dates and birthdays.
Also I have hyper extensible joints to the extent that it freaks people out.
I'm great at music intros, give me 2 seconds of (almost) any song from 1980 onwards and I can get it. Ditto with lyrics.

Great reading everyone else's!

I can remember conversations from years ago. Who said what, where we were, and the outcome. Word for word.

I'm great at mental arithmetic but if you ask me to work it out on paper I can't do it. That's why I got a poor maths O level as I couldn't show the workings out.

I've heard a voice in my head telling me not to go out and later finding out that there was a car crash or other disaster in a place where I would have been at that exact time had I gone. That's happened a few times now but if I said it to anyone I'd get looks.

My DH can identify any tune within the first bar, song, singer and sometimes the year.

I can sleep anywhere, and like a PP I fall asleep on a plane as soon as I sit down and have to be woken up when plane has landed.
I make friends super easily, but I am a complete commitphone even to friendships and am equally good at pushing people away (on purpose I might add).

Enjoying this thread. Like another person, I am like a homing pigeon and once I have driven somewhere I can drive there again without needing a map.
I always know where North is. Have experimented with this over the years to prove it; blindfolded, spun around etc and can still feel where north is!

I can also tell when a thunderstorm is coming (or needed?) as a few days before I am so so tired and headachy then as the pressure builds I get really bad pressure head!

Bit of a lame one but i can recite the alphabet backwards very very fast

I am grade 8 at the piano, thanks to the tireless abuse of my narcissistic mother and when I was 14, I performed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall.

I have not played the piano or uttered one word of my "talent" since I left home at 18. I hate the fucking thing.

Another one. Not sure this is a skill or just a thing. If I see or hear about an accident, it hurts. Like a painful tingling, it starts in the soles of my feet and goes up my legs. I don't like it at all.

As an IT professional I spent 3 years working on the Y2K “bug” but I never mention it as everyone knows it was a scam.

This isn't a skill as such, but I must have a 'common' face. Since I was a child, I have people coming up to me mistaking me for someone else (not the same person as they use different names/places they 'know' me from.)

At least 2-3 times a year, someone will be sure that I am someone they know/knew - to the point that they get upset that I'm not and think I'm lying to them. This has happened when we've been abroad with non-English people too. I'm also often aware of people looking at me quizzically as if they're trying to place me but not sure enough to come over and give me hugs!

I'm really ordinary looking and don't look like anyone famous.

I have never had a hangover. And I drink. A lot. And I can mix my drinks without any ill effects at all and pretty much drink anyone under the table. It's not something I'm particularly proud of but it is handy and annoys the heck out of friends as I'm irritatingly chirpy early the next morning...