Obscure Skills

You are 'Latin'. Even among obsolete skills, the
tongue of the ancient Romans is a real
anachronism. With its profusion of different
cases and conjugations, Latin is more than a
language; it is a whole different way of
thinking about things. You are very classy, meaning that you value the
classics. You value old things, good things
which have stood the test of time. You value
things which have been proven worthy and
valuable, even if no one else these days sees
them that way. Your life is touched by a
certain 'pietas', or piety; perhaps you are
even a Stoic. Nonetheless, you have a certain
fascination with the grotesque and the profane.
Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad
transplant. Your problem is that Latin has
been obsolete for a long time.

What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla (Appropriate, given that I spent four years sweating over it in high school.)

c/o Scrivener, though I first saw it at Geeky Mom.

Yes, I know that this quiz measures obsolete skills, not obscure skills.  I wanted to broaden the discussion a bit to include those odd little skills that you pick up along the way, skills that you'd never be formally trained in, but which can make all the difference in how easy it is (or isn't) to do something.

Some of my own personal examples:

Paper handling, meaning the physical manipulation of paper, such as stacking neatly, interleaving pages, stapling effectively, avoiding paper cuts, loading printers and copiers, preventing wrinkles, keeping paper dry and clean, tearing neatly, cutting accurately, and so on.

Reading automotive body language, including being able to identify when someone really wants to get in your lane vs. when they've left the blinker on, knowing when someone's about to speed up suddenly -- or not, anticipating the interlocking movements of large truck, small car and clueless SUV so as to not hit or be hit by any of them, recognizing the difference between a person with bad tires and malfunctioning steering and a person who is drunk, etc.

Gaming digital cameras so that they take pictures that reflect your vision by using tricks such as faking out the flash, focusing on something then moving the camera, memorizing the degree that the rangefinder is off from the finished picture, knowing when a room is too dark to omit the flash and when you can get away with it in the name of creating cool effects, and other similar tricks.

Being able to balance variables such as room temperature, size of mug, time permitted to drink tea, amount of milk available, amount of sugar available, time that tea was allowed to sit, and so on so as to produce tea that tastes consistent and stays at the perfect temperature for the entirety of the consumption window.  (I'm still working on this one.  I'm getting close!)

Comments

[Laura (geekymom)]

I'm good at reading instruction manuals--a great skill to have in a technology field, though no one reads manuals anymore and they're all online.

I used to be good at parallel parking until I got a huge mini van and the spaces seemed to shrink.

I'm also exceptionally good at Googling, though I expect half the blog world is.

[Scrivener]

Love the obscure skills list. My wife would be jealous of your tea skills, I know.

I am pretty good at reading automotive body language too, although it just aggravates me all the more because, for example, I can see that you do in fact want into my lane but you aren't putting on your damned turn signal so I don't want to encourage you by being nice and letting you in.

I sort laundry into much finer gradations then simply light, colors, dark. I do loads of light pink; darker pink; red; black; dark blues and greens; lighter blues and greens; yellow, khaki, lime greens, greys, and so on; browns; white t-shirts with designs on them; white whites. I am also good at judging exactly how big the free-form sorted pile can get and still fit in the washer. And I have a fundamental sense for how long it'll take the dryer to actually get the clothes dry. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to actually fix my dryer, which is why I am stuck at home right now waiting for the service tech to come out and do it for me. Arrrggghh.

I am good at being tough with my students and not letting them wheedle their ways into too much leniency. I am also good at recognizing that their sometimes astoundingly stupid requests are not, in fact, any kind of personal affront on me and therefore I can afford to simply answer them or not, without actually getting upset about them. (An ESL student told me this week that he was having a hard time in my class, and all he was focusing on was just trying to slide through with a minimally passing grade so that he can graduate on time, so he'd be willing to accept a B from me, and that the basis of said minimally passing work would be, since he isn't a good reader or writer, his class participation and attendance, which is why he's only been absent a few times this semester and has been trying so hard to stay awake in my class, only having failed at this effort a couple of times. My response: Well, thanks for letting me know. You'll have to meet the standards of the class to get a satisfactory grade. Bye. And I was only amused by his comments, not upset.) Does that count as an obscure skill?

[Rana]

I say that counts as a survival skill!

(I love this notion of "I'll let you give me a B" -- entitled much?)

I am impressed by the laundry skills. I'm pretty good at the color sorting, but not so good at eyeballing washer volume. These days, of course, the "volume" is how much will fit on the drying rack, and I'm not too bad at guessing that.

[Scrivener]

Yeah, that conversation was a very funny one. I get a fair amount of that kind of wheedling at Tech, where so many of them are used to good grades and think of English as the easy, or at least wishy-washy stuff.

[Rana]

Laura -- yes to the googling, too!

:)

(I remember fondly once when I bet (w/o money) a colleague I could find a particular obscure something online for them in less than a minute. I won.)

[LiL]

What a great skillset. Now, how do you do the not-getting-paper-cuts thing?

[Rana]

I don't precisely know, Lil. It's something in how much pressure you do or don't put on the paper, how you put your fingertips on it, probably something to do with avoiding rapid movements near the edges, maybe the quality of the skin on my fingers...

The only paper cuts I ever get any more are when I'm being stupid and do something like carelessly plunge my hand into a drawer full of folders or something, and that's quite rare -- on the order of maybe three or four times a year, if that. (Knock wood!)

[Chris Clarke]

I'm a little curious as to why this post keeps showing up as a new post in your rss feed.

[Rana]

Chris -- weird. Perhaps it's because I added the actual quiz after the initial posting? But that would account for only one repeat.

I'm afraid that's the best answer I can give; I've never really understood how the RSS feed works for this blog, beyond knowing that I need to check a little box in Typepad's preferences if I want it.

[jocelyn]

i think i have your same obscure skills. yay. thanks for articulating these so well!