Friday 15 June 2012

Being Good at Things

I am always slightly perturbed when I discover people that I know are good at things. For example when you discover someone you have known for, say, ten years, has been playing the oboe since the age of seven and you didn't know what an oboe was until the age of 14, and that was only because of the Alton Towers' advert theme tune. Also, in this case, it would be discovering that this person is of a completely different social class to you, like when one of my friends told me as a child she had a day nanny and a night nanny, who were fluent in different languages, and that's why she excels at languages. I live in a flat with two guinea pigs in the living room, the floor is a mass of hay, make your own conclusions.

Anyway, I think the phrase is "An All Rounder" which means you are relatively competent at everything. This, of course, is a lie. I cannot catch a ball, ride a bike without rendering myself infertile, run without looking like a chicken or eat without getting food in my hair, which means I have to scrape my hair back like a Victorian school mistress on a daily basis. Contrastingly, I am friends with incredibly talented artists, musicians, dancers and more irritatingly those girls who are just good at being alive, who have an inability to tread in dog poo. So though I've sat through a lot of really crappy bands because my friends are in them and seen a lot of terrible amateur manga drawing (really? A, well-endowed, female, pink fox who's also a super hero? Her powers are all in her breasts? Did you use your dominant hand for this drawing?), these people that are good at things surround me. Most of these people have been doing whatever their talent is since the age when I was still refusing to brush my hair, as I believed birds might nest in it if I was lucky.

So here are the things I think I am good at, none of them have ever got me a boyfriend/ impressed an employer:

I can do fairly accurate scathing impressions of people that I don't like/barely know.
I can wittily mock talented people whilst they are on stage making me and my co 'all-rounders' feel better.
I can analyze something for gender bias within 30 seconds.
I can talk authoritatively on subjects I know nothing about. This will be very useful when I'm a teacher, sod learned knowledge and practiced talent, the secret is to have a big booming voice and hold eye contact with the little shits.
I can tell you the glycemic index of almost any food.
I can make impressive and macabre fancy dress outfits out of chicken wire, newspaper and an immature imagination. Then I can probably bully you into wearing it.

There we are that's the sum of 25 years of learning, worrying and existing. I do worry I shall end up a strident feminist, in a macabre cheap wig, teaching a class about particle physics from an article I've just read on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, all my musical friends will marry Andrew Bird, my scientist friends will discover cures and my linguist friends will sort out the Middle East. At least I'll have time to watch Made in Chelsea.