Don’t feel badly.
Our DS was coming to visit us. He called me to get his flight info…confirmation number, times etc. say what? It was made worse because when he called I was driving in my car, and I was visiting relatives out of state anyway. But I had the info on my phone. Now isn’t it ridiculous that I was expected to have this, but the traveler didn’t have it!
Some old time skills have maintained their importance and even become more important in this day and age. One is typing. When I was in high school girls were required to take typing class. Boys were not allowed to take it. Typing was a marketable skill for a woman. Boys would either be managers with secretaries or would be manual labors and didn’t need to know how to type. Along came the computer and everyone needs to know how to type, a skill I had to learn as an adult and never really mastered as some of my posts here on CC attest to.
I knew a woman in my age group who refused to learn how to type in high school. She had ambitions to be a professional and she felt that no matter what position she ever attained a male colleague would ask her to type up something because, you know, she was a woman and knew how to do that. So she could honestly say that she didn’t know how to type. Like me she had to learn tyoing as an adult.
The instructions are in the owner’s manual, if the car has a spare tire (some do not these days).
Regarding cars, how about knowing how to use a manual transmission?
I teach middle school Family and Consumer Science and as part of my lessons I include how to address an envelope, how to write a check (yes, many things are paid online/Venmo, but some places still need checks to be paid so for now I consider it a valuable skill), how to sew a button and how to do a simple repair stitch. My 7th graders also have to do a load of laundry for homework which is hands down every parent’s favorite homework assignment LOL!
Some of my students know how to do all these things, many do not. Perhaps some would learn these from their parents later on in high school, but in case they don’t, I’m glad to have been able to introduce them to these skills.
That was me! I never took typing but haven’t found it difficult to keyboard given plenty of practice.
I can drive a manual transmission, but I never learned to type.
I was in a college prep high school in Germany, learned two foreign languages, but no typing.
My kids learned typing in high school, and we taught them to drive a manual transmission.
Is driving a stick really a life skill? Most American cars sold are automatics. I have a friend who spends a good amount of money on her fancy sports cars and she laments that manual transmissions aren’t even readily available if you want them anymore. I used to know how to drive one- decided it was a skill I should have at 20- but have never driven once since learning and probably couldn’t manage it any longer.
I don’t know if it’s a life skill. You can manage just fine without it. When I moved to the States, we usually owned automatic transmission cars but then got a good deal on a manual.
But then again I don’t really need to type either.
It just depends on the person and life circumstances.
My mom was the high school state typing champion in Texas back in the mid-50s. 
She made extra money by typing for law students, professors, and authors while I was growing up. She paid me by the page to proofread what she had typed. I loved that.
I started typing from a very young age and did pretty well in state competitions, although not as well as Mom. I’m very thankful for all that experience now - typing over 100 wpm comes in handy these days.
The only cars we could rent in South Africa were manuals. I know how to drive a manual in the US, but I just couldn’t master it backwards (shifting with your left hand). Thank goodness, my dad, in his 70s, could do it just fine!
I took typing senior year in high school; I would need the skill to type my papers in college. It brought down my average!
When we visit DH’s family in the UK, we’ve often rented manual transmission cars from local rental places. And yes, it does take a few times of whacking your right hand on the door - the door that isn’t supposed to be there! - before you get the hang of the shifting with the other hand. 
Well driving a stick was a life skill in high school in the later 70’s. I learned with friends as we drove to Florida from Detroit. My friends literally taught me in the middle of the highway first time driving to Florida. They said all you have too do is go straight. Don’t screw that up.ha
In high school we were forced to take typing. I typed 40 words /, minute.
In my professional world I have done speech recognition since the late 90’s. When I actually have to write something my hand muscles hurt… Lol.
DD once clogged the toilet and tried to plunge it with… the toilet brush. What a mess!
Sometimes overcoming or minimizing parenting fails means that some things that should be obvious… just aren’t.
I think driving a stick is life skill too, especially if you are going to rent cars overseas. It’s also a great antitheft deterrent ; )
I learned to type in high school but it was a required course for everyone, like shop and home ec. No gender divisions.
D learned to type at home in middle school when she started having to submit papers in Word and was wasting time hunting and pecking. We found a free website that had typing “games” that she did in her spare time.
I love those typing games.
My daughter didn’t know how to run the dishwasher. Granted, it has many. many buttons, but all you have to do is press start and it runs the last cycle.
Somewhere, a long time ago, I read that you should run your dishwasher overnight for energy conservation purposes, so we load it after dinner and then I would set it to run as I was going to bed. The kids never actually ran the dishwasher. Load it - check; empty it - check. Run it? No idea.
My husband and I would fail on some of these life skills - neither of us can drive manual or change a tire (and we are about 60 years old). My husband has gotten so used to only using a cell phone that he always forgets to turn on the landline handset before he starts dialing!
My daughter (25 yrs old) pays some of her monthly bills with checks and therefore can write a check and knows where to put the stamp.
I think the life skills lessons are going both ways now. I still show my kids things like how to light a gas stovetop and file a tax return. They keep me apprised of the ever evolving social media landscape (Tik Tok, Snapchat), explain the humor behind memes, and identify the “celebrities“ in magazines at the dentist office. They are very quick at finding helpful youtube videos on the fly, like the one that showed us how to unlatch the windshield washer fluid reservoir cap on my complicated car.
Speaking of typing class, did anyone have penmanship as a grade school subject? My kids have neat handwriting but they use a combination of cursive and block letters. They would have failed penmanship class. Some parents at our school were concerned that students were not prepared to do the handwritten essay portion of the ACT/SAT because they were accustomed to doing their writing assignments on computers.
My D (20 yrs old) has had an aversion to getting her hands dirty since she was young. She refused to help me with chores like taking trash out, gardening or washing dishes by hands (uses a dishwasher, yes). She has gone off to college without doing such things.
Needless to say, at her first time washing dishes after an event (organized by students with help from professors), she was not good at the task and the poor prof had to closely supervise. At least, she has learned to do it.
I can’t knit because I am left-handed. Growing up, family and friends were all right-handed and could not teach me. My D (right-handed) has learned to knit in college from a male friend. I am very happy about that.
Driving a standard shift is a life skill. My son and four friends rented a car in Almeria Spain. My son was THE smallest of the five people and really should have been in the middle of the back seat.
BUT, he was the only one who could drive a standard shift car so he got the comfy driver’s bucket seat.