Video of the World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion. I read somewhere recently that everyone seems to have a talent like this, something a little odd that they can do better than most people. I can spit watermelon seeds a great distance (I've won two contests!). What can you do?
There are 72 reader comments
• Jan 12 2007 • 2:40PM
I can yo-yo better than just about anyone I've met. I'm not at competition level but I'm able to impress the hell out of just about anyone who watches me.
• Jan 12 2007 • 2:42PM
I can armpit-fart on over 30 different places on my body. For real. That's what happens when you're skinny and bored as a 13 year old.
I've also been timed at over ten seconds for a regular hand/armpit fart.
• Jan 12 2007 • 2:56PM
I'm good at being brief.
• Jan 12 2007 • 2:56PM
Moving one eye and keeping the other still.
• Jan 12 2007 • 2:57PM
I can make my eyes vibrate back and forth.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:05PM
I can write backwards (mirror writing) at a speed a little more than half of my normal writing speed. I don't practice and never did. I discovered this fun but useless talent as a kid when I became interested in Leonardo da Vinci. I can't read what I've written unless I put the paper up to a mirror. Since I can't read what I write, I don't need to look at the paper, I just think out the letters.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:06PM
I can fall asleep in less than ten minutes no matter where I am.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:10PM
Back in the days I could throw a tennisball at 104 km/h
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:12PM
i can tie cherry stems into knots in my mouth.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:20PM
I can recite the alphabet backwards in less than five seconds. And related to Laurie's post, I can write backwards badly, but I'm good at reading words backwards and upside down.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:24PM
"I can tape all your butt cheeks together"
- Andrew (The Breakfast Club)
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:31PM
Archery. With about a week's practice I won multiple "camp wide" archery contests against kids who had been hunting for many years. I didn't even really need to aim concsiously; just draw and send the arrow to the bullseye, every time.
On the flip side, I seem to be uniquely incapable of following a beat, change in tone, or anything else even remotely musical.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:33PM
I dominate Wario Stadium.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:33PM
I can fit an inordinate number of grapes in my mouth at once...last time I tried I got 38.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:38PM
I can do the Elvis lip thing (where he moves one corner of his upper lip) but really high... so high it hits my nose.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:39PM
I peaked earlier than just about anyone I know.
• Jan 12 2007 • 3:42PM
There is a whole group of people who work on Aircraft Carriers and the like who write backwards for a living. not deriding your talent, as it seems pretty hard to me, but I guess they've found a way to train that into people.
I can speak at about 300wpm.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/revenge_of_the_nerds.html
• Jan 12 2007 • 4:03PM
If my hands are touching my hips I can touch my elbows together in front of me. Also, if I take one arm pointing up and one pointing down and then link my hands behind me, I can bring my arms in front of me to form a circle (kinda hard to picture, I know)
• Jan 12 2007 • 4:18PM
I can peel oranges and apples in one continuous piece of peel. Kids love this one!
• Jan 12 2007 • 4:26PM
When I was working, I used to be able to read kottke all day long, refreshing, reading the archives, going to Meg's site and pretending Jason was using a pseudonym. Kottke from 8-5 (I even read during my lunch hour). But then I got fired and now I can only read the site when the public library is open and they have a time limit as to how long I can stay on the computer so now when my time is up I write some links down on a piece of paper and pretend I'm on the site and open a newspaper or magazine every time I "open" a paper link. I sometimes leave pieces of paper lying around for people to leave comments on even.
• Jan 12 2007 • 4:28PM
With my left hand I can reach around my head and touch my left ear, same with right too.
• Jan 12 2007 • 4:40PM
Perfect pitch. Does that count?
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:08PM
I had a teacher in 7th grade who could draw perfect circles, except she did it by placing her pinky on the board and then rotating her hand (with chalk in thumb and index fingers) around around her pinky, much like using a compass to draw a circle.
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:09PM
I'm a really good whistler.
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:12PM
i have the most dramatic hitchhiker thumb of anyone i've ever encountered (i can bend my right thumb about 120 degrees back, or so).
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:17PM
I can hear low-frequencies way before other people in the same room can. I've been testing myself through this all the time.
I can also recognize quite easily any song I know by just listening to the first few seconds of it, any genre.
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:18PM
oh.... I can read Kottke all day. =)
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:20PM
Throw stuff—especially empty 20-oz. soda bottles—into garbage cans on the street from great distances.
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:28PM
I can spot a typo or layout error in any reading material within a couple of minutes.
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:37PM
I can say any word backwards, less than a second after hearing it
• Jan 12 2007 • 5:46PM
I can hammer a nine-inch nail through a board with my penis.
• Jan 12 2007 • 6:09PM
I can write backwards and forwards fine with either hand. Uselessly, I can write the same sentence forward with my right hand and backward with my left hand simultaneously.
• Jan 12 2007 • 6:29PM
I can curl my tongue upside down.
• Jan 12 2007 • 6:33PM
Whenever I see an Air Hockey table, I challenge people and play a few matches. I've only lost a single match in my entire life.
• Jan 12 2007 • 6:44PM
I make soud effects with my mouth and voice. I can also move me eyes around and around and around and up and down and around really really fast. Oh and I do this thing where I...
• Jan 12 2007 • 6:52PM
Although I know they exist, I have never met someone who can type faster than I can at 130 wpm. I've also never met someone who can kick a hacky sack more times. My best is 600 (I think the world record is around 100k).
• Jan 12 2007 • 7:12PM
I can wiggle my ear without moving anything other muscles on my face. I practiced doing this all the years growing up at mass on Sunday... because you have to be real still and serious... and I was sitting there strenghening my ear muscles... you know, so I could hear God real good.
• Jan 12 2007 • 7:21PM
I can count the number of letters in a word almost right away, if you say a word. I can also type faster than Brian Mingus, I am not lying. But I can't kick a hacky sack more than 3 times.
• Jan 12 2007 • 7:43PM
I can hang 9 spoons on my face and I can make a perfect water drop sound by tapping on my cheek (which feat I learned from seeing Bobby Goldsborough do it once on The Tonight Show in about 1965).
Does anybody here know who the hell Bobby Goldsborough is? I hope not.
• Jan 12 2007 • 9:06PM
I can hula hoop for extended periods. This doesn't come up a lot, as I avoid Burning Man, but I've also won two contests.
• Jan 12 2007 • 9:18PM
I can do a two-handed 360-degree dunk on a regulation hoop. I'm a six foot tall white guy.
• Jan 12 2007 • 10:23PM
I can fit my clenched fist into my mouth.
• Jan 13 2007 • 12:00AM
I can wiggle my ears, together or independently. The ladies dig it.
• Jan 13 2007 • 1:15AM
I can improvise a complex story using elements taken out of my environment or suggested by the audience on-the-spot and my audience will be riveted to the story from start to finish. Kids will have eargasms. When I saw the finale of the Usual Suspect I was smiling.
The problem is I never remember any of my past stories and I'm too lazy to record them.
• Jan 13 2007 • 5:02AM
I am the greatest Photohunt player of all time, (on the megatouch machines in bars.) It's the game where you find the differences between the two images. Of all the things I do, it's the thing I do best.
• Jan 13 2007 • 6:25AM
At a rate of 20 a minute, I can blow fully formed bubbles of saliva off my tongue that float off in the wind.
• Jan 13 2007 • 8:52AM
I play boggle like a fiend, I've never lost a game* in my life.
*where "game" is defined as a race to 100 points, not just a single session.
• Jan 13 2007 • 9:11AM
I can blow the spit bubbles, though probably not at that pace. I don't feel that one's a natural talent though because I practiced for ages as a kid.
I have exceptionally stretchy skin on my face. It doesn't droop yet but when I get old it's going to hang down past my belt.
I am also particularly good at finding the right sized tupperware to store leftovers. I can find the perfect receptacle for almost any quantity of leftover food. Awesome, right?
• Jan 13 2007 • 10:10AM
I can raise my ears about an eighth of an inch, and can actually hear way better when I do it It totally creeps out my wife.
• Jan 13 2007 • 11:32AM
I have never lost a game of Monopoly in my entire life.
• Jan 13 2007 • 11:41AM
i can stick a smartie in my nose and pick it out with my tongue
• Jan 13 2007 • 12:19PM
I can fit a wine bottle cork up either nostril.
And I can read upside down which upsets a lot of my friends.
• Jan 13 2007 • 3:13PM
In my teens, I could let someone put out a deck of cards, one card every 2 seconds, and I could remember everyone. Which order, if ace of hearts came before king of hearts etc. Not anymore though...
• Jan 13 2007 • 4:32PM
I'm like a tunnel, or something. I can fart and burp at the same time.
• Jan 13 2007 • 4:42PM
I can drool a resemblence of Elvis on my pillow when I sleep.
• Jan 13 2007 • 8:38PM
I can do a perfect imitation of a harelip (the audio part). I'm pretty careful about only doing it around people I know well for fear of offending a true harelip and getting the crap beat out of me.
• Jan 13 2007 • 8:40PM
I can cross and uncross my eyes over and over again about ten times a second. It seriously freaks people out.
• Jan 13 2007 • 8:48PM
I have absolutely no gag reflex.
• Jan 13 2007 • 9:15PM
I can play Mortal Kombat (x) number of games and win ... while turned away from the television.
• Jan 14 2007 • 10:04AM
I can tell you the story of the English painter Lucien Freud who, when he was a child, could draw both sides of a vase perfectly symmetrically with both hands at the same time.
• Jan 14 2007 • 11:00AM
I can make a heart shaped hickey.
• Jan 14 2007 • 3:42PM
I have an excellent ear for most latin-based languages and can mimick accents really well. I can get out of a choke hold, an arm hold and if someone is sitting on top of me pinning my arms down. I can wiggle my ears.
• Jan 14 2007 • 5:34PM
An insanely realistic mouth trumpet and super-distance gleeking.
• Jan 14 2007 • 6:44PM
I can move my eyes indepently of each other (though not to be wall-eyed), touch my thumbs to my wrists, and am a very, very good mimic of accents and personalities. (Edith Ann, Ernestine, Geraldine, Rosanne Rosannadanna, Emily Litella, and famous actors, living and dead.) Also, I am a really good joke teller. This is not a talent that everyone possesses, alas.
• Jan 14 2007 • 10:36PM
I can read aloud at over 400 words per minute.
• Jan 14 2007 • 11:22PM
Alright, now everyone has to upload video and audio of their talents. These are great!
• Jan 15 2007 • 5:54AM
I can raed snetcenes lkie tihs as fsat as nrmoal osen but tehn eervdoby esle hree can too. ;) (So lnog as the fsrit and lsat ltretes are in the rgiht palce.)
• Jan 15 2007 • 2:09PM
I can put my left arm behind me, and reach up and scratch the back of my head. I can also scratch virtually all of my back including a small part of the back of my left shoulder using my left hand (not my right though, the right shoulder is much less flexible).
• Jan 15 2007 • 7:54PM
I can:
- Remember (almost) every word of "Pink Floyd: The Wall" (what I get for listening to it 2x/day in its entirety my whole freshman year).
- Write technical documentation in my sleep (no guarantees about quality).
• Jan 15 2007 • 8:31PM
i can fit 30 cheeseballs into my mouth. i can also finish two economy sized containers of cheeseballs from costco's in a week. i'm 5'0'', 92lbs.
and
i can sniff out a closed, hidden jar of nutella in my roommate's closet and finish it off in the hour with chopsticks.
• Jan 16 2007 • 5:36PM
When the origianl Trivial Pursuit game was all the rage, I never lost a game. I retired undefeated; haven't played in years
This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.
Sean Madden • Jan 12 2007 • 2:38PM
I had a physics teacher who could draw a perfect circle on the board. He claimed that it has something to do the ball and socket joint in your shoulder and being able to leverage the natural range of that motion in conjunction with keeping the rest of your arm straight.
I don't have any real talents but there are two mundane tasks that I seemingly can't do: I can't spread and can't clean glass. Every time I try to spread something it turns out awfully and my dad used to accuse me of cleaning windows with a fudgecicle.