Want a list?

When I'm backing out of a parking lot, I can't tell how close I am to the next car, wall, curb, etc. When I look out the window to the targeted distance, I just can't tell if it's 2 feet away or 2 inches. Something weird about my depth perception, perhaps, or maybe I just don't pay attention enough. When I parallel park, I always wind up a foot away from the curb because I can't tell how close I am to it when I'm backing in. Couldn't ever be a bus or truck driver.

There's more, lots more.

I unconsciously stand on one foot while brushing my teeth, or while running water at the sink for whatever reason. Not every single time, you understand, but often enough that it's a thing. I catch myself doing it all the time, putting all my weight on one foot, the other foot raised ever so slightly off the floor. I have this theory that I have some sort of spiritual connection to waterfowl... like flamingos or other birds who'll stand on one leg while wading in the water.

Wow, you actually manage to get a foot away? You got me beat. I can't parallel park worth a damn.

I drop things. A lot.

I have a big bag and all my shit is lost in its gaping maw. My keys, sunglasses, wallet. Search, search, search. I am so annoying.

Oh, and I can't hear you. What?

I am completely retarded at math. I can't make change or count money very effectively, so I rarely use cash. On the rare occasions I do, I have to use $10s or $20s , even if I have small bills in my purse, rather than go through the angst ridden act of trying to count out the right amount in front of people. (e.g. if the total is $3.75 i will give them a $20 even if I have $8 in ones). It's easier just use the damn card.

Oh, and I don't know the pin number for my ATM card, so I can only use it as a credit card.

And I never look at my bank account. It freaks me out and confuses me. I only use automatic bill pay, I won't mail anything.

I'm highly organized at work, but hopelessly disorganized at home. I have a phobia of paperwork: I have huge boxes of bills and bank statements and letters that need to be gone through, but I dread them too much to touch them.

I am physically incapable of holding movie popcorn. I've never been able to do it, but have always been the designated popcorn carrier, I think probably due to a combination of my stubbornness and my parents finding it hilarious when I would spill it all over yet another person in the row in front of us.
You might think that my fine motor skills as an adult who can draw calligraphy and make small jewelry would be good enough to hold popcorn by now, but you'd be wrong. Every time I spill, either walking or sitting down or once already sitting but just not balancing it properly.
I always offer to carry the soda instead these days.

I get how to balance my check book and I don't see the point so I don't do it, I just look online at the transactions instead. (You're the only ones who know that about me!)

I very rarely know what day of the week it is, and I asked my sister tonight if she wanted me to pack her a leftover lunch for work tomorrow and freaked her out. If I am ever in an accident and they ask me the day upon me waking, I think they will think I am amnesiac. These are the things I stay up thinking about.

I can trip over perfectly flat surfaces.

I must have missed the day at school when they taught left and right. I've never gotten it down pat. I have to seriously think hard if someone tells me to look or turn to my right (writing hand, writing hand). If I do it without thinking, I'm entirely likely to go the wrong way. This is the most shameful of all.

My proprioceptive awareness is shit. I'm constantly stumbling into things. In high school, some people accused me of being a drunk, even though I'd never touched alcohol. My partner complains that my elbows are dangerous weapons when we're lying in bed together. I have a very difficult time imitating anyone's movements -- hence, I never learned how to throw anything (in a sports-related context) properly.

My short-term memory resembles that of the proverbial goldfish. By the time I open up a new browser window and type in "google.com", I will have forgotten what it is I needed to look up. Or I'll dial an area code and forget who I was calling. Sometimes I wander from room to room, realizing I wanted to take care of some task but forgetting what it was as soon as I arrive in its general vicinity. And sometimes I'll start writing a comment and completely lose my train of thought a sentence or two in, which is probably most of why I don't contribute too much on mefi.

I don't know where to look when I'm talking to people. Not because I don't like eye contact, but I don't know how to do it very casually, and the direct stare that feels comfortable to me strikes some people as weird (and others as flirtatious/sexually aggressive/whatever). So I tend only to glance at people's faces for half a second at a time, and then gaze smilingly upon their shoulder while hoping they don't think I'm ogling their chest.

I hear Robert Stack voiceovers whenever I make a change in my routine. "But at six-fifteen on a misty spring morning, Rachel turned her car towards the park to avoid rush-hour traffic. It was a decision she would soon have cause to regret."

I park at an angle, every freaking time.

I hear Robert Stack voiceovers whenever I make a change in my routine. "But at six-fifteen on a misty spring morning, Rachel turned her car towards the park to avoid rush-hour traffic. It was a decision she would soon have cause to regret."

HAHAHAhahahahahaha! I laughed so hard my neighbors outside stopped talking and listened to me cackling away.

My own short list:

- I cannot see. No, really, Without my contacts or glasses, I can discern details only up to about 6 inches away. I can't read without lenses; even if I bring a book close enough to read, usually the light is blocked out by MY HEAD.

- I fall over. Like, a lot. I fall off my own shoes, despite favoring chunky low heels. I'm looking for ankle-strap shoes for my wedding, so I won't fall over on my way to the ceremony. (Oddly enough, during physical therapy my PT repeatedly told me I have a highly developed sense of proprioception. Apparently, I know where my body is in relation to other objects; I just don't care. I'm a daredevil! I'm the Evel Knievel of falling over!)

- I'm largely deaf in my left ear --- it got blown out at a Black Flag concert in my teens.

Oddly enough, during physical therapy my PT repeatedly told me I have a highly developed sense of proprioception. Apparently, I know where my body is in relation to other objects; I just don't care. I'm a daredevil! I'm the Evel Knievel of falling over!

OMG, that made me laugh. I suspect that I am similar -- when I pay attention, I'm *very* good at movement (like dance) and spatial arranging (like herding up groups of people to fit better into a space and not block traffic flow (I know this from being a tour guide)), but when I'm just going about my daily life, I bump into everything and I pretty much just shrug it off. It's like, "Whatever, didn't hurt, I'm sturdy, it's cool," and I continue on my merry way.

occhiblu, it took me years to figure out that, for me, the difference is one of intention and attention, just as you say.

When I'm in the archaeology lab working with thousand-year-old bone or 400-year-old ceramics, I'm attentive and intently focused and precise in my movements. When I'm alone in a big city, weaving my way through a crowded street, I'm noticing everything around me and can move like a snake through grass. When I'm holding a friend's squirming baby or puppy, I'm deft and firm and gentle. Because I'm paying attention.

But apparently I go through my own mundane world with a rough, bumpity lack of attention, falling off my own heels, dropping my own books, kersmashing my wristbones into doorways so frequently that I actually gave up watches a decade ago.

Not too long ago, I managed to sock myself in the eye hard enough to raise a modest shiner and --- here's the kicker --- it evidently registered in my brain as a non-event, since I don't really remember how it happened.

Hee. Constant conversation in our house:

ikkyu2: You have an enormous bruise! Where did you get that?
occhiblu: Huh. I have no idea.

It's apparently a law of some kind that one shoelace is untied. It doesn't trip me, It doesn't get caught in escalators or elevators. No problems at all. Double and triple loops do nothing.

It drives everyone around me nuts. Then they drive me nuts with "Your shoe's untied. Did you know your laces are undone? Hey, get your shoe. Ack! You're going to fall!"

I am completely retarded at math.
Me too. I "get" numbers and can crunch stats and stuff with stupid ease, but ask me to do simple calculations in my head and I'm completely lost.

lysdexic:: ditto on the shoelace thing. Drives everybody else crazy, but I have yet to stumble even once. I only tie them to get people to stop fussing about it.