Some things about me

I believe everyone has weird talents that don't usually get noticed. The weird talent isn't your run-of-the-mill stuff, like being able to run a mile in 4:00 minutes, or hop on one leg for 2 hours at a time. I'm talking about the weird stuff that your friends notice and say, "wow, I didn't know you could do THAT."

In the interest of full disclosure, here are some of mine:

1) I can fix simple mechanical things. There is something about them that my eye just understands -- it's almost as if I follow the trail of movement back to the parts and understand how one propels the next.

2) I can do the following things on your car: Change the tires, change the oil, replace transmission fluid and washer fluid, replace the burned-out bulbs in your taillights and headlamps, and change the wiper blades. If you have to take your car into a mechanic to do these things, then you are heartily deserving of the ass-fucking he is going to give you and your wallet.

3) I can drive a manual transmission. In theory, I know how to do this without depressing the clutch pedal. My dad taught me. It's all about listening to the engine and knowing what the proper rpms sound like. I've never had the balls to try it out on the road for fear I would feel a thump, look in the rearview mirror, and see my transmission hurtling through someone's windshield, but like I said, I can do it, theoretically.

4) I can calculate the discount on sale items in my head faster than most people. I realized it's because most people do it in two steps. So if Macy's is having a sale on All-Clad open stock for 40% off, most people will multiply the cost of the item times 40, then subtract what they get from the cost. I just multiply the cost of the item times 60 and get there in one step.

5) I can identify a song in a noisy restaurant simply by the bass line.

6) I can also identify the DNA of a song, i.e., when I heard Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do," the very first thing that popped into my head was, "Hmm, she stole that from Stealer's Wheel, 'Stuck in the Middle With You.'"

7) I usually don't have to pick out the harmony parts of a song. They are just THERE for me.

8) I'm unusually resourceful when it comes to remedying things around the house. The other day I dropped a spoon between my sink and the wall, a space about an inch and half wide. My hand wouldn't fit in that tiny space, so I retrieved it with a wadded up ball of duct tape stuck to the end of a broomhandle.