Things I Never Learned

I never learned to play a musical instrument. My few weeks in fifth grade honking on a clarinet got me no farther than extreme pain somewhere in my sinus cavities . My efforts at learning guitar from a book were fruitless.

Tying knots, other than my shoestrings, has always been a sticking point. After ten years of trying, I can, with the proper karma, tie a trucker's hitch about 75 percent of the time. I usually go with the old motto: if you can't tie a knot, tie a lot!

How to draw. A frustrating thing, because my dad was a natural artist; something he never pursued, but was able to call upon without thought. My best work involved Atlas missiles and Mercury spacecraft back in first grade. I drew hundreds of them, as did every other boy in America at the time. I haven't had the need to draw spacecraft lately, so I'll bet my work as a six year old will remain my artistic highpoint.

Anything more advanced than the most basic math sends cold chills down my spine. Back in the day, I was the victim of a cruel hoax. For a few, critical years, the nation's children were indoctrinated in something called "the new math". Everything we'd learned up to that point we were to forget, replaced with some genius's idea of a better way to do things. After a couple of years, we were told to forget the new math, and go back to the old way. Too late; I was forever to be confused. I confounded many a mathematics teacher by improvising new and creative ways to calculate things. I don't think I ever did the same problem the same way twice. Worse yet, I was unable to explain how or why I came up with the answers I did, even if they were correct. Thank God someone invented the pocket calculator; I can almost add and subtract accurately today.

Speaking a foreign language was something I really did want to learn. Unfortunately for me, due to frequent relocation to new schools, I was learning French one year, Spanish the next, back to French, back to Spanish... as a result, when somebody asks if I speak (fill in the language here) I answer with a simple "No Nintendo."