I have been driving for 51 years and I can not parallel park. People ask how I passed the drivers test in HS and I have to explain that the man at the local DMV was a neighbor and friend of my parents (yes, I lived in a small town).
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The spot has to be WAYYYY big for me to consider parallel park. But parallel parking is my younger daughter’s super power (LOL) so she has been trying to encourage me to do better at it. But this weekend she was trying to get me to parallel park in a spot that was also on a steep incline and I was like “NOPE”!!! 
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I’m pretty sure I told this story before, but I never learned how to parallel park. My behind the wheel guy was terrible. All we did was pick up someone else at their house and drive to his office where we would watch non-educational TV. My DMV test didn’t require parallel parking either. I just had to drive around the block, all right turns, and back into the parking lot.
A few years later, my instructor was on the news. He had since gotten married and his wife was expecting a baby. He kept having nightmares that one of his former students would wreck and kill his family, so he turned himself in for fraud.
And so… I do not attempt to parallel park, unless it’s 2-3 spaces in a row open, and even then I’m terrible. My Mom, OTOH, is a champ. I’ve seen her park with one try in a spot that couldn’t have had more than 6 inches clearance on either side. Benefit of growing up in Brooklyn.
My big boss from time to time asks me if I want my CDL to help drive the snow plows. I reply that you do NOT want me behind a snow plow. I know my limitations. My Lumina (now Sonata) is big enough!
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I did that level of the Red Cross swim course too. So much fun! Lifesaving on the other hand… I think I was almost drowned by the instructor!
Yep, my husband is a parallel parking champ, on either side of the street, due to years of driving in Brooklyn!
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Mine did too! At least the one I took at 16 up in NOVA. The guy was not big, but wiry and he actively tried to down us as we tried to save him. It was good training.
Now the lifeguard class I took where I live now to be the swim coach was completely different. I don’t think we had to save anyone. Just extend the red floaty thing and throw the ring to someone. I don’t think there was even a time limit on the 500.
I am a killer parallel parker. Comes from driving a large car and being assigned a tiny parallel spot for two years of HS. I can park anything, in any spot.
What I can’t do is ride a bike. I just never learned. When i was the right age to learn my parents were having a pretty crazy time and both worked most evenings and weekends, so they didn’t teach me. Then a few years later when they had the time, I didn’t want the people in the neighborhood to see that I couldn’t ride.
I wish i could, but now I’m afraid of falling and breaking something.
Ironically, my S25 worked at a “learn to ride a bike” camp as a camp counselor this summer. He was teaching kids ages 3-12 to ride. He’s confident he can teach me. I may take him up on it this fall… For every 15 minutes he’s willing to put in behind the wheel of the car (he wants his license, but doesn’t want to practice driving) I’m willing to put in 5 minutes on the bike… we’ll see.
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I grew up in the suburbs, but have lived in Brooklyn since around 1978. I can parallel park even without the backup mirror on cars newer than 10 (?) years ago. Have done it on hills with standard shift way back when, too!
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If you do try the bike this fall, ask your son starting on the grass. That’s how our daughter was taught by the neighbor, after we were unsuccessful getting her off the training wheels.
I learned parallel park well enough for driver’s test. But I’ve rarely used the skill. Around here there are typical many other parking lot options. I’m not sure it is even on the local driver’s license test requirements.
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Old age has taken its toll on me. I can’t do anything well now.
Crafts- use to do crewel work and silly art. Now I just make my own birthday cards.
Violin - played in county orchestra thru HS. Have barely touched it since.
Camping - use to love it; went out every other weekend with BF. We’d canoe and cook fresh food. I liked sailing too. I spent a summer horseback riding almost daily, thru the national parks. We also got to a medium level with cross country skiing. NEVER good at down hill nor skating.
Dance - I started at 3. Danced in the Nutcracker a few times, and in college. Then shifted to Pilates but haven’t ever gotten good.
Sudoku - haven’t moved past medium in 24 years.
Swimming - now I have a pool but I won’t put my head in. Had a lifesavers certificate and was a swim counselor.
Cards - haven’t played bridge since grad school and wouldn’t know any rules now.
Okay if people skip this long post. It was fun.
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You can do Soduko Medium? I’m jealous… I think stuck at beginner forever.
Per bridge, consider taking it up again. I’ve heard of several people at assisted living who want to keep playing but can’t find enough interested residents. It might be a cool volunteer gig.
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There is a lot of value in being adequate (medium!) at many things instead of top notch at one or two things!
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I can parallel park well, as well as reverse, even ignoring a backup camera, which came with my 2018 car. I learned to drive in a station wagon and other large vehicles and my car for 20 years was a minivan.
I don’t think I can ride a unicycle and am wobbly on ice skates pretty quickly as I get cold and my ankles aren’t very strong. We only have one ice skating rink, so this issue hasn’t come up much.
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I use a paring knife to make an initial incision. That makes it easier to get a fingertip (or at least the side of a fingertip…) under the peel without filling the fingernail with bits of peel.
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I don’t think the issue is lack of tools or methods, at least not for me. I have those tools and I know how to use them. But why? Slicing is so much easier and eating from the peel is no harder than without, just so much less work/mess.
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I actually prefer peeling them with the knife – less pith that way, and minimal fingernail fussing.
Funny but I often think that if I just tried harder or practiced more I could be good at more things…
I am not very good at knife skills. I can cut things up, but not quickly or evenly.
Fine motor skills not great (bad handwriting)
Not a great skier - was too pricey to go often enough or take enough lessons to move beyond pizza. But I enjoyed it!
Running - never got to the point where it was anything more than a chore and lmited distance.
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last year before a trip to Europe I started about 9 months in advance to learn the language with hopes of hitting a low level such as A2. I wasn’t going to be the American that just showed up and didn’t know a single word, I was going to meet them half-way.
I spent at least 30 minutes most days, often more like an hour. Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, a flashcard app, a grammar book. It just never really sunk in the way I had hoped. I could slowly produce sentences that seemed correct (eg. matched what translate showed) but my listening comprehension was really low. Often I’d hear a gibberish sentence on the Pimsleur recording, replay it and use my phone to translate, then realize (since it shows the sentence in both languages) I knew all the words and could have said the foreign sentence from the English prompt. The flashcards used spaced repetition and when it waited a day, then two days, then a few days between testing I’d remember the words but then it would bury them for a few weeks and I’d often forget them.
A part of me still feels I just didn’t spend enough time and that the area where I was especially weak (eg. listening) was weak because it got so little practice. But if the solution would be hundreds more hours then I guess learning another language goes in the “didn’t like” group.
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Fruit - I can’t eat things like apples or peaches without cutting them up. No way I’m sinking my teeth into them.
Parallel parking - back in the dark ages when I took my driver’s test as I looked back over my shoulder and started to turn the wheel I somehow leaned on the horn which scared me half to death in my already nervous state and I yelled “what was that!?”The DMV guy just rolled his eyes at me. But I passed!
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When I was young, I knew a kid who wouldn’t eat peaches because of the fuzz on the peach. Canned peaches - yes. Fresh peaches - no.
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