skills

When the average person sees an exquisitely painted image of Red Skelton being accepted into clown heaven, the first thoughts one might have will likely be something along the lines of "Huh, I didn't know clowns had souls" or "why does that one bear such a striking resemblance to John Wayne Gacy?" But some of us, a very select few, might think "finally I have something to replace the cross above my bed." Hey man, everyone has their thing, and that's where we get skillful creations of absurd taste.

There are always things we could improve with our demeanor or social skills. So if you want people to trust you (for non-nefarious purposes) or just get a leg up when playing tennis, there are some things we can all do to get that coveted psychological edge. A pretty simple psychological hack like knowing when to speak or how to make the right kind of eye contact can be a total game-changer.

There's no denying that people are very creative as well as incredibly skilled at making such interesting things. That said, who really wants a toe bed? Maybe this stuff resonates with at least a few people out there, but on the whole, a toilet guitar isn't gonna be something that a lot of us want to buy. It's just a drop in the bucket of the many impressive creations of questionable taste.

We don't really think about bricks. In a world where new buildings are steel and transparent, the brick has become a symbol of rugged pragmatism of days past. But in the right hands, a few bricks can become a highly aesthetic thing of satisfying perfection. They're graceful. Very unlike these "not my job" moments of incompetent construction or these OSHA safety failures.

You've got to love an AskReddit thread that pays homage to those basic skills that people are for whatever reason, plain old terrible at. It's funny how life works out like that. Sometimes, we just end up falling through the cracks when it comes to picking up tidbits of common knowledge that we should really have known in the first place. Some people's brains just operate at a different frequency, where they might have no idea how to write in a legible manner, no matter how hard they tried and were pushed to do so throughout their schooling. It ain't nothing to be ashamed of. Or, perhaps you're someone who has an impossibly hard time maintaining the flow of a conversation on the phone.

I mean, now more than ever we're so dang conditioned to communicate through texts, Snapchats, memes, etc. that when it actually comes time to formulate some words, and comprehensible sentences in a dialogue, your mind can end up going helplessly blank. Or, maybe you're one of those people who can't whistle to save your life. Whistling's hard, and shout out to the people in this world that can manage to whistle a tune. While others, can't even get the thing going in the first place.

An AskReddit thread like this can serve as a powerful, humbling, if not inviting reminder that you're not alone in your pursuit toward picking up those life skills and knowledge that you know you should probably know, but just can't quite seem to get. Maybe you have friends and family that have lovingly tried to help you put the pieces together along the way. Hopefully, not the opposite, where you're faced with fielding banter and roasts from people that love to make a mockery of you not quite being able to get there.

The overriding point is that patience is key, and above all else, who really cares at the end of the day if you can't whistle or write out a letter/card that other people will be able to read? The truth is, nobody really cares. Maybe for a hot second they'll get hung up on it, have a good laugh, and give you a nice old fashioned hard time. But then, then you move onward, and maybe you find in yourself a newfound desire to take the time to actually master the very thing that up until this point has escaped your attention. That can certainly be a proactive, productive way to lead a life. The very things that can initially give us the most trouble, can somehow evolve to be our special skills later on down the road. It's like, life loves to test you, throw you off your rhythm for a sec, and ultimately see whether or not you're going to accept the challenge. Challenges can be fun. There's always a nice little dopamine rush waiting at the end of mastering that thing that gave you so much trouble at the onset. So, maybe this thread will give you new inspiration, or at the very least, it'll make you feel better about those skills you're currently lacking.

Some things seem incomprehensible if you don't have a background in them, but just giving it 30 minutes of effort or following directions makes a lot of things surprisingly easy. If this made you feel even slightly motivated, here are life hacks and tips for becoming a slightly more effective person.

@Jdesmondharris asked twitter users what regular life skills they totally suck at. We know from just looking around that tons of people are crap at parking, but some adults freely admit to still being bad at tying their shoes. Sure, you don't need to be able to tie your shoes to understand a nuclear reactor, but it would probably put your coworkers on edge to hear about it.

If you thought that you'd never learn an incredibly strange, specific and completely stupid hobby, don't quit just yet. There's a guide for everything from identifying wood to crafting sexy origami! Like, even if you wanted a guide for stray shopping carts, by god it exists. For other strange relics, here are some weird and amazing forgotten items found in thrift stores.

With the NFL draft coming up, people were excited to share their own stats. When comparing themselves to actual athletes, twitter was understandably self deprecating.

Ignorance is bliss. We don't advise reading these "we're all doomed" moments from grateful pilots, who pulled things off, without any passengers getting wind of it. You can just feel the terror and panic in these stories. Flying is fun until it isn't!