Confessions of a Slow Learner
Age nine was an important year for me. It was the year that I finally learned how to do two things my peers had known how to do already for at least three years: tying shoelaces and riding a bike.
( Transformers Velcro! )
( Transformers Velcro! )
It was a long time before I mastered cartwheels, though they strike me as one of those things that become dramatically less advisable the older one gets...
I make use of the "lefty-loosey" mnemonic all the time. Oh yeah, I couldn't tell my right hand from my left until I learned from someone, in college I think, that you can make an "L" with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand. This little device was invaluable, though fortunately I don't need it anymore.
Your intuition about how a car brake would work makes for quite an interesting alternative design. In some parallel universe, there's a Basil Womack who learned how to drive without any hassles. :)
Finally, I have a whole vexed history when it comes to swimming. My mother (who can't swim) forced me to take lessons for half a dozen summers when I was a kid. I did OK, though I never felt totally at ease in swimming.
My confidence in swimming evaporated when I was 17. It was the summer I went to France as an exchange-kid, and my host-family went to a rocky beach on the English Channel. My "host-brother" got in, and swam out like thirty or forty yards, then turned and waved. I swam towards him, got tired, and put down a tentative toe. There was no bottom, and the rest of my body started to follow my toe downward. I panicked, flailed about, and managed to do a wretched backstroke back to shore.
I didn't do any swimming again until the UNC swim test. I ended up sinking like a brick as soon as I jumped into the pool, twice. Of course I took the test my final semester on the last possible day. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice my two failures (or else they looked the other way) when I went through the line to get my "certificate of completion" stamped. Definitely one of the most weaselly moments of my whole life; but hey, did I mention that I almost drowned, twice?
In retrospect, I really ought to have taken a swim class at UNC. And I knew this at the time, too; but I was both too lazy and too scared to do it, and foolishly pinned all my hopes on a good performance during the moment of truth.
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