Things You Don’t Like to Admit You Don’t Know (But We’re All Friends Here)
If we’re honest with ourselves, we all spent our childhoods looking at the adults around us and thinking they knew it all, and that we would too when they were our age. As adulthood came around, we realized how much we still didn’t know, and the smarter among us realized it wasn't just us: Adults in general are winging it a lot of the time. When someone asks you if you know how to do a thing, it’s common to awkwardly nod and then Google it quickly. All of us have at least one “white whale” that, in fact, we don’t know how to conquer. Many of us have more than one.
Here’s the good news: that’s OK. You’re not given a manual for adulthood, and even if you were, it would probably be out of date by the time you were halfway through. In writing this post, the key is to let you know you’re in good company. There are so many things that bring so many of us out in a cold sweat. You’re not alone - and there is a way through our shared cluelessness.
“You know how to whistle don’t you?” “Well…”
In one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history, from To Have and Have Not, Lauren Bacall’s character memorably says to Humphrey Bogart's: “You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? Just put your lips together, and blow.” It’s a disarmingly simple explanation, delivered perfectly by Bacall, and it is of zero use to people who do not, in fact, know how to whistle. What that is, is a very good explanation for how to make a fart noise.
In truth, whistling isn’t something everyone gets the hang of. There are even multiple different types, which can make it more confusing. There’s the standard, lips-only move, which entails making a tight O with your lips and directing the air over your tongue as you blow, but not too hard or too lightly. There’s the inward one, which is cheating but hey, whatever works. And then there’s the sports coach special, where you place your fingers inside your mouth and deliver a sharp, deafening shriek of air. Most people never master that and hate the people who have. But if you can’t whistle, there’s always clapping anyway.
Playing Backgammon: Our guilty secret
You spend a large enough chunk of your early life hoping nobody will ask you to play Chess and then, the moment you have it down, someone says “Hey, want to play Backgammon?”. You nod, stare glassily into the middle distance, and then just copy what your opponent does until they ask if you actually know what you’re doing. And you have to admit that you don’t because you thought a Backgammon board was just something people kept in their house to look intellectual.
The truth is Backgammon is relatively simple once you’ve learned the core idea; you work to move all your checkers onto your home board, and then remove them; movement is dictated by two dice, and you can introduce a doubling cube at a certain point to speed things along. Of course, that will still sound like gibberish to many people, and most of us learn by playing, so trying it out online first is a good idea; the computer won’t think any less of you for not having learned before.
Changing a light bulb is no joke
We’ve all heard the rib-ticklers about how many [people with something in common] it takes to change a light bulb and let’s be honest: those jokes wouldn’t exist if there weren’t enough people around who actually don’t know how to do it. And that’s not as weird a thing as you might believe, not least because there are so many types of light bulbs, different kinds of fitting, wattage… the whole nine yards. So while everyone laughs at the idea that it takes however many lawyers to change a light bulb, rest assured that you’re not alone if you don’t know how.
Here’s what you really need to know: Firstly, check the light fitting for the correct kind of bulb (there are ways to find out more online if you’re not sure). Second, cut the power to the light you need to change. Third, if the lightbulb has just blown, give it time to cool; some of the older bulbs can get up to nearly 500 Fahrenheit. When removing the bulb, turn counterclockwise. When fitting the new one, turn it clockwise. And if you’re wondering, yes, it is perfectly acceptable to repeat to yourself “righty tighty, lefty loosey” as you go.
Reading an analog clock as a digital native
For anyone under the age of 50 (and some who are over it), clocks have always been digital; there’s really been nothing to learn. But then, out of nowhere, an analog clock shows up, and you need to be able to read it - and the ongoing digitization of the world has left you horribly unprepared. You can either be late or admit to someone that you don’t know how to tell “big people time”, which means you’re probably going to be late because who wants that shame?
Okay, so here goes: The little hand is the hour. The big hand is the minutes. There may also be a longer, thinner hand for the seconds but that’s just showing off. The clock is divided into five-minute increments separated by hour marks (because there are twelve hours it could be sixty minutes). When the little hand is in between the 2 and the 3, and the big one is on the 8? That means it’s 2:40. If you’re wondering whether that’s AM or PM, look at the sky, there should be a clue there.
Its all tied up…
Unless you went to a fancy school, chances are you never needed to wear a tie until you got a job interview or were invited to a wedding, and then the nerves of the day were multiplied by the realization that life had saved this test for right now, just to mock you. Tying a tie is one of those things that has been made stupidly complicated for no good reason, and it’s hard to render in words, so we’ve included a video example below to help out. But the basics are as follows:
Start with the wide end on the right side of your neck, about 12 inches lower than the narrow end
Cross the wide end over the narrow end
Loop the wide end back under so it ends up back on the right
Loop the wide end back over
Pull the wide end through the loop that you will have created under your neck
Thread the wide end down through the front loop
Tighten the knot by holding the narrow end and pulling on the wide one
If you’re reading that and thinking it’s ludicrously complex, that’s the simplest knot a tie can have; it’s called a four-in-hand. And yes, it is pointlessly complicated. It can look pretty nifty, though, so it may be worth learning. Or you can do what so many others have done and just buy a clip-on. Nobody whose opinion matters will judge you.
A taxing time
Every April there comes a time where you have to fill out some of the longest, most elaborate forms you’ll ever see, and remember why you should have kept all your receipts, and if you get the math wrong then you can go to jail. Even the most diligent, honest citizens feel like liars when they sit to file their taxes, and the kicker is that most of us were never taught how to do this. The first thing you need to do is allow yourself some time; if you can do it months ahead of schedule, you probably should.
There is no trick or shortcut to filing your taxes. It has to be done, it has to be right and it has to be on time. The base advice is to read the instructions that come with the forms and double-check everything. Or if that sounds daunting, there is tax software that makes things more straightforward. And if you don’t want to do it at all, hire an accountant to do it for you. Sure, it costs money, but making a mistake on your tax forms could cost a lot more, so it’s usually money well spent.
It can feel like some things in life are designed to trap us into revealing how little we know. The truth of the matter is that we are all in the same boat, desperately hoping that our ignorance isn’t exposed. None of us knows how to do everything; the key is that we should all be open to learning.
So the next time someone asks you if you know how to play backgammon, whistle or tie a tie, you can say “Look, I’m working on it”. Because we all are, and not everybody knows how to be honest about it.
