Dear Sir, I seek an urgent business relationship with you, my name is Mr. Duku Charles and I reside here in Accra Ghana. I am requesting this business co-operation on behalf of a well respected senior citizen of Ghana (Name with held for now). I am contacting you to seek your partnership in a financial transaction involving the total sum of Fifteen Million United States dollars (USD15,000,000.00) which is currently deposited in the Agricultural development bank Ghana, this money dose not have any criminal or illegal origin, the owner of this money is the person I represent and he has mandated me to seek for a reliable person out side his own known associates to do this business with. Your involvement in this transaction is very simply and completely risks free you will not at any time contribute a cent towards payment of any bank or government taxes in other to receive this money in your account via bank to bank wire transfer. I will provide all the funding for the payment of all bills that will be incurred from start to finish. For providing an account to receive this money you will be adequately compensated with 10% of the total amount. Due to the current probe on ex government officials and their known associates my client has decided to secure his hard earned money overseas to avoid unnecessary embarrassments from his detractors in government. The sending bank here is ready and we are ready to handle all expenses, all I need is your confirmation that you will assist us under these conditions. As soon as the transfer is made my client will travel to meet with you to receive his money less 10% your commission. Please absolute confidentiality is required now and in the future. Consider yourself lucky. I look forward to your earliest response. Thank you. Duku Charles Facilitator. Focus: Handwriting. I'm not great at it or anything myself, but I can not understand how some people just chicken-scratch shit all day. A girl I work with/date currently has nice handwriting with one exception.... the number 8. Her 8's are so severely slanted, it looks like the number in front has kicked it's ass. The line through 7's annoys me too. If you write your 7's and 1's right, there's no point.
Focus: I also do not know how to ride a bike, and I am 25. I grew up living in a house on a busy street, which is why I never learned. Also, I wear glasses, and have never worn contacts. I wanted them very badly, and the last time I tried was when I was 19. I sat at the eye doctor's for probably a hour trying to figure out how to get them into my eyes, but I just could not do it. It looks pretty easy but I could ever help but shut my eyes when my finger made contact. Alt Focus: I know the capital of every country in the world. When people here this they get amazed, but it wasn't that hard to learn them all. My IQ is in the normal level and I graduated college with a 2.90. I know several other people who can also name them all, and know a lot more random stuff on top of that.
I am fucking shocked at the amount of people who can't ride a bike on this board. What kind of parents do you all have?
In high school I found out one of my closest friends couldn't tell the time with an analog clock. He relied entirely on digital clocks and then cell phones when they started becoming widespread among teenagers.
FOCUS: I cannot cut in a straight line to save myself. I maintain that the year my family spent in a caravan travelling around Australia was the year it was covered at pre-school. I understand the concept. I have the motor skills. I just cannot fucking do it. It makes keeping neat edges on the hooker body parts for reassembly later an absolute pain in the ass. ALT FOCUS: Various feats of hand/eye and body co-ordination. Toss a ball from behind my back and catch it in front? Easy. Touch my nose with my tongue? Easy. Balance a roll of loose coins on my elbow and catch them all? Easy. Pat my head and rub my belly (and swap)? Easy. Vulcan sign? Easy. Rotate my arms in opposite directions and swap them without breaking rhythm? Easy. But getting in and out of a chair is a son of a bitch...
On the plus side, the jigsaw-like properties of the poorly-cut body parts will stop you from making any embarrassing limb mix-ups. FOCUS: I can't whistle. I just don't get it. Sounding like wind over rocks? Yup, that'll do. Pronouncing most foreign languages I run into correctly? Got that too. But pursing my lips and tweeting? I might as well be trying to knit with semen.
Focus: What mainstream skills have you/someone you know just not acquired? Why? How has this affected you/them? (Giving a woman an orgasm doesn't count.) I can't throw to save my life. Honestly, it's fucking embarrassing. However, as a child, I stayed largely indoors, content with Legos and books. The only sports I played involved balls on the ground and use of feet. So, I can't do anything more than throw like a girl. Hell, there were some days when I'd release the throw a little too late only for the ball to go shooting at the ground in front of me. These days, I almost flat out refuse to chill and play catch with my buddies. Alt. Focus: The usual nerdy things: Type, be awesome at shooters on consoles, cook, do simple math. I just don't get the simple math one. More than anything, division and multiplication of large numbers tends to be achieved by using tricks rather than brute force like you would with pen and paper. Also, I think I'm just average at console shooters and can't figure out why others can't do as well.
You can still fix that, you know. If you throw like a girl, it's because you're not leading with your other elbow. Most people that "throw like a girl" (other than Johnny Damon), look like that because of arm action. Like, you can probably do the step and throw part - if you're right handed, turn sideways to the target, stride with your left foot towards the target as you throw with your right arm. But it's your left arm that causes the problem. If you let it sort of dangle at your side or flop around aimlessly, you'll flail like Nancy. But, if you point your left elbow at the target as you're drawing back to throw, you'll be throwing heat in no time. Somebody else chime in here and help this dude. Every man needs to know how to throw, dammit. Alt Focus: Did somebody already mention not understanding why people can't properly use your / you're and its / it's?
Also, how are you holding the ball? (I'm going to assume you're trying to throw a baseball or similarly sized ball) Don't hold the ball all the way back against your palm; hold it with your fingers against just the top part of your palm. That way when you relase the ball your fingers will naturally guide the trajectory of the ball instead of getting in the way and causing the ball to hit the dirt five feet in front of you. If you're having trouble with your throwing motion just watch a baseball game and mimic the way pitchers throw. Unless you're a horribly awkward person your body's natural mechanics will impell you to throw the ball with a more or less proper throwing motion.
This reminds me, I've always been weirded out by people who do well in school, yet don't know a fucking thing. My sisters for example. I don't remember their exact GPAs, but both have a 3.8 or higher, yet are completely incapable of discussing anything. I did reasonably well (3.5) and my brother did pretty poorly in college, but you can take just about any field of study or topic and we'll at least have a primer or base understanding. My sisters though? Not a fucking clue. A few weeks ago we were talking about chemistry and my sister didn't even understand that atoms are composed of neutrons, protons, and electrons. How the fuck did she get an A in chemistry? How? Neither of them know shit about history, literature, science, or anything beyond stupid pop culture. This is surprisingly common from what I've seen.
I know a ton of people like this and it absolutely drives me crazy. I had a 4.0 student (taking org chem, bio, and physics, so no cakewalk) ask me who Ghandi was and then why she should care about him. You'd be amazed how many people can't even pinpoint what decade(s) WWII took place in. How do you graduate high school not knowing stuff like this?
Focus: What mainstream skills have you/someone you know just not acquired? Why? How has this affected you/them? (Giving a woman an orgasm doesn't count.) Things I never learned how to do: -Blow a bubble with bubblegum -Blow up a balloon -Snap my fingers -Whistle The only effect this has had on me is being frequently being made fun of. For example, my manager walks past me a couple of times a day whistling while snapping his fingers just to annoy me. Dick.
Focus: I never learned how to properly wrap a gift. As I was wrapping the gifts I got my family for Christmas, I was amazed at how terrible they turned out. I knew I was bad at at it but holy shit. I feel like this should be a pretty simple task but no, it's hard as hell for me. I used to make my ex girlfriend wrap all of my gifts for me because I simply cannot do it. The paper ends up crinkled, torn, or with ends that are all fucked up. I'm constantly amazed at this. People are always amazed at the shit I know and I don't consider myself a brilliant or very smart person by any means. I call it being informed and knowing a little something about everything so that I don't sound like a jackass and can discuss a wide variety of topics with people.
This is common because much of school consists of memorizing facts without putting in the context that is necessary to put them together. If you're actually interested in the material, then the context is easy because in order to understand it, you need to know what's going on. On the other hand, if you couldn't care less about what's going on, then it's just an exercise in associating questions with answers. For example, there are two ways to do physics - memorize a shitload of formulas and learn by rote when to use them, or to memorize the formulas and learn when to use them through an understanding of what you're doing. Both of them look the same to a teacher, but only the latter kid knows what's actually going on. Later, once the actual class has faded from mind, the first kid has already brain-dumped the material because contextless facts are about as useful as a football bat. The second kid, on the other hand, might have forgotten some of the more in-depth material, but still has an understanding of what's going on. For example, back in high school, I would occasionally ask my dad how to do a physics problem. He'd say, "Hang on, I have to read the book," read it for five minutes, remember it, and then explain it. My mom, on the other hand, was (and still is) completely clueless. Both of them got As in physics when they took it, but my mom never actually had an understanding of the material; she was faking it the whole time. Some kids are VERY good at faking it, because they have a good understanding of what the teacher is looking for. Back to the physics example, it's not too hard to learn by rote when to use an equation. "It's asking for acceleration, and I have velocity. I did a bunch of homework problems on this, so I know that I use this formula to take the derivative." Okay. What is acceleration? "I dunno." What is velocity? "I dunno." What is the relationship between acceleration and velocity? "I dunno." How could the kid know? To this kid, velocity, acceleration, and the derivative are just numbers and steps in a process. You put velocity into a formula, and magically you get the answer. He's going through the motions, but has no understanding of what's actually going on. But of course, he gets the right answer, and the teacher is happy. Six months later, he has a conversation with a friend about physics and says "Wait, what's acceleration again?" The friend then feels an urge to slap him, because no learning actually took place. He didn't just forget what acceleration was, he never learned it. It was just a letter A on the paper, just like a letter V or S or Q. You could have called it Wakilixies and he wouldn't have known the difference as long as you gave him a formula that Wakilixies went into. That doesn't matter to most people, because they never cared about physics; they cared about getting a good grade in physics. There's a big difference. (Spoilered for those who don't give a shit) Spoiler All the stuff that I just wrote above about a kid going through the motions with physics, I do with people. I have no actual understanding of how people interact; I just observe and parrot (and fail miserably). Like that kid who writes down "KE = 1/2mv^2" and doesn't know what a joule is, I can't figure out what the hell is going on when I have a conversation with someone. If it's about something, like what's going on in class, I'm good. If it's about nothing, like "How was your day" or "What's up," then I'm sitting in graduate level English without having read Hooked on Phonics. It doesn't even have to be something significant; if it's on a given topic, then there's context to put it in, and that's interesting. I can work with that. But the transitions between topics, the stuff that people say but don't mean, the stuff that people mean but don't say, the stuff that people can't talk about because it's awkward and get uncomfortable when it's mentioned, the stuff that people talk about, know it's awkward, and laugh about it... What the fuck? I'm that kid in physics class again; I've learned by rote what to talk about, what not to talk about, what to avoid, and so on, but there's no context. There's no greater picture for me to put the facts in, and my efforts to figure it out are useless. And unlike physics, there are no equations; there are an infinite amount of things that can happen. You can't fake real life. Two kids are putting together a puzzle. One kid is sitting there looking at each individual piece, finding where each little nub and crevice is, and using trial and error to painstakingly put the thing together. The other kid doesn't have to do that because he's looking at the fucking image. The second kid looks at the first kid and asks, "Are you retarded? You've been working on that thing for nineteen years, and all you're doing is staring at the nubs. Why aren't you looking at the picture?" "What picture? There's a picture here? I just see chunks of cardboard." I got tested in middle school because I kept saying shit that pissed people off. I have a vivid memory of asking the teacher, "How come all the dumb kids have to sit up front?" To me, it was a completely innocuous question; I was interested in what the teacher was doing by clustering all the dumb kids together. It made more sense to me to put dumb kids inside groups of smart people. It didn't occur to me that I just called the front row of kids idiots. Fast-forward six months, and I'm sitting in an empty classroom fiddling with blocks and talking to some nice lady about why I don't have any friends. They didn't find anything. I have my own theories about why they didn't find anything even though there's definitely something wrong, (Again, when evaluating kids, teachers look at how the kid solves problems. If the kid can solve problems, then the teacher says "He's normal" even when the only reason is that the kid is good at telling the psychologist what he wants to hear) but they never prescribed any sort of occupational therapy or whatever. I am Grade-A Certified Normal, just like the girl who graduated with a 3.8 GPA and doesn't know what a neutron is. The other kids gave their own therapy, of course, which taught me to shut the fuck up. I don't blame them, but I'm pretty crippled at this point, like a kid who's in high school and never learned to read. Everyone else learned how to read years ago, and I'm sitting there mouthing out Go Dog Go and wondering how the fuck everyone else is effortlessly reading those chapter books. Except at least an illiterate kid can get laid. Shit, Hotwheelz has a better chance than me.
Focus: I have to say that people who don't know how to swim always baffles me. I'm not talking about swimming across the Atlantic, just plain old "keep your head above water and don't drown" swimming. One of my favorite pastimes on a hot summer day here at the cottage is to float around the lake on my back, staring into the clouds. This requires nothing more than small hand and foot movement to stay afloat, so I'm always perplexed to hear about a fully conscious person that drowned in warm, calm water when it requires such little effort. I'm not saying I'm Michael Phelps or anything, but there really isn't that much to know; you move your arms, you kick your legs, and you swim. What perplexes me even more is people who KNOW they can't swim purposely going in or on the water. Last summer two guys drowned near here, at a public beach. The first guy couldn't swim yet was happily frolicking in chest deep water. Unbeknownst to him the bottom drops away suddenly at this beach, and he took a step in the wrong direction and promptly started to drown. His buddy, who could swim, jumped in to save him but in his panic the first guy manages to drown his buddy, then himself.
Focus: I can not use a standard tape-measure to save my soul. I'm A contractor for god sake! Fractions of inches fucking mystify me. oh, it's 1 13/16 you say? Which one of these little black marks is that fucker? Just draw a line and I'll fucking cut it there. To be fair I am a general engineering contractor and we work in 10ths. (a foot divided up in to 10 equal parts or roughly 1 1/4 each.) Its so bad that I have to keep an engineers folding rule around the house just so I can hang pictures and blinds and shit. Its just high fucking comedy when I am helping friends do home improvement stuff. I feel like there should be a translator between us. Alt Focus: I can visualize 2d drawings in 3d with scary accuracy. I can just look at a set of blueprints and see how the whole thing is supposed to fit together and if there any grade busts. It pisses off a lot of the people I work with because I don't have an engineering degree and can call them on their mistakes. Even the ones that have made it through plan check and been approved by the municipality. They try to defend themselves but math is math, water won't drain up fuckin hill. You start to develop some really bad blood when the client starts taking the proven word of the dumb shit contractor over the registered engineer. All by the guy that can't read a standard tape-measure.
Alt focus: One thing that I am able to do is actually fold laundry. I have watched some of my friends struggle to properly fold a shirt and it makes me want to slap their mothers. It's a crucial life skill that is really easy to learn. A useless skill that I uncannily have it the ability to tell immedietely when a commercial break has ended on another channel. I don't keep track of it on the time, I just sit change when there is a commercial, and change back and 80% of the time it is within the first 10 seconds out of the commercial break. I know, I'm like a fucking savant.