At some point or another, everyone's missed that one day of school that taught fractions or the preamble to the Constitution, and that was that. The boat was missed and even now you can’t get further than "We the people in order to form a more perfect union." These are kind of like that, only way more embarrassing to own up to since knowing how to do all these things is basically how you get your adult card. Right?
More From Your Life in Gear
1. Tell direction
If we were stranded in the desert with no phone compass or map app to guide us, and a magical oracle told us that the way to salvation was west, we'd be dead.
2. Change your own oil
Where does one get oil? What kind? How do you buy it? How do you open the hood? So many questions, for something that just requires pouring liquid into a hole.
3. Fold a fitted sheet
The crumple-into-a-ball method has gotten us all this far in life.
4. Iron a shirt
No one ever tells you that wrinkles in your face come from trying to get them out of your clothes. Collars, creases, cuffs... mom!!!
5. Whistle
Sounding like a strong breeze isn’t a great look. Or sound.
6. Snap your fingers
It makes “Just like that!” fall really flat.
7. Write a check
Paying online and on your phone is the best thing to ever happen to us all, until that one time a year you have to write a check for some reason. Do you have to put in cents or nah? Is it weird to call your parents and ask?
8. Know how far to walk when someone says something is X miles away
Why can’t everything be divided into city blocks?
9. 401K stuff
How much are you supposed to set aside? Is it worth it if your employer doesn’t match it? What does it mean? What if you get fired/quit/die? Who does it go to?
10. Ride a bicycle
If pratfall SnapChats are to be believed, hoverboards are making bicycles obsolete anyway.
11. Send a fax, make a copy, or use any ancillary aspect of an office printer
No one tells you how it works but everyone expects you to know. And you’ll quietly panic print 12 copies incorrectly before you actually break down and ask.
12. Drive
Thanks, Uber.
13. Flirt
Just be mean to them until it works, like a 3rd grader.
14. Eat certain kinds of fruit
How to eat a Kiwi might as well be astrophysics. Don't even start with Starfruit.
15. Throw a ball
Like any kind of ball, dude. A baseball, a basketball, a tennis ball. You don’t even need to be a ball savante, richly experienced in any and all ball-throwing, a ballaissance man, if you will. Some people are baffled by the basic mechanics of any and all throwing motions with a spherical or semi-spherical object.
16. Roast… anything
There’s a reason you crash other people’s holiday dinners, and it’s not that your place is just too small.
17. Microwave popcorn
It burns. The fire alarm goes off. Every time.
18. Make a decent omelet
Not even a gourmet omelet -- those are hard! Just a decent omelet. Basically, pretty scrambled eggs.
19. Build self-assembly furniture
Just admit it: all the pieces were there. And this thing you built is not what you ordered.
20. Parallel park
When you pass up a perfectly good spot close to where you’re going because you “could use a walk…”
21. Give a reasonably good massage
Punching someone in the back is neither sensual nor relaxing.
22. Drive a stick-shift
If you didn’t learn as a teenager, you're never gonna learn. Timing is not for everyone.
23. Embed a gif
It’s way too late to ask someone. Years too late.
24. Sign your name like an adult
Blame your humility for never thinking that you’d be famous, or your parents for naming you, but wait staff are laughing at you.
25. Make coffee
When someone casually asks you to throw on another pot, you break into cold sweats. Where does the filter thing go? How much water? How many grounds? There's a reason we spend a quarter of our paycheck on Starbucks.
26. Read a map
Sitting in the passenger seat of a car with a lost, stressed out person who asks you to look at a map “real quick,” is like being in Dante’s inferno.
27. Type properly
Why does everyone at work stare as you type as fast as humanly possible with two pointer fingers?