50 Things I Can’t Do

December 23, 2009
By shoutingatco.ws

50 things I can’t do.

There aren’t 50.

1) Growing up

  • Poo in a public toilet
  • Grow a proper grown-up beard
  • Resist drawing cocks on blank paper. Big spunking cocks with all balls and pubes
  • Go to bed at a sensible time, even if I have to get up early
  • Work the washing machine (why does it have more than one setting, really?)
  • Understand the inner workings of a car
  • Leave spots alone
  • Dress up smartly
  • Wake up on the first alarm and get up
  • Save money

2) Other people

  • Chat up women
  • Subtly check out cleavage
  • Leave a coherent voicemail message
  • Enjoy being in a crowd
  • Feel comfortable haggling in a shop
  • Pee at a urinal next to someone really tall

3) Games & Entertainment

  • Give a computer game character a sensible name (“Hello, my name is Spunky”)
  • Play board games fairly
  • Play computer games online
  • Simplify tactics on Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Dance without looking like I’m mocking people with cerebral palsy
  • Sing in tune
  • Maintain any sense of rhythm
  • Listen to Metallica’s “Sad But True” without air-drumming along to the intro, like a twat
  • Down a pint
  • Sit still for the entire duration of a film

4) Health and safety

  • Enjoy the meat in sausage rolls now I’ve started thinking about what it actually is
  • Eat crisps quietly
  • Drink one, and only one, beer
  • Last a whole year without some sort of disorder that causes excess snot
  • Know when to stop texting / e-mailling / instant messaging after drinking alcohol
  • Drive within the speed limit
  • Cook a complicated meal
  • Play football (1 x destroyed ankle, 1 x ball-saved-with-face)

5) Day to day

  • Take recycling seriously
  • Go into a supermarket and buy everything on my list. And nothing else.
  • Take a menu-selection risk when ordering a takeaway
  • Walk past a stone and not kick it
  • Speak foreign, despite 10+ years of learning, and somehow a qualification in German.
  • Moderately swear
  • Make small talk with a stranger

6) The Rest

  • 8 times table quickly
  • Be photographed and look even a bit normal. Oh good, I’m blinking again.
  • Show a suitable amount of decorum through the National Anthem, without looking like I’m taking the piss
  • Watch an entire episode of Question Time in one sitting
  • Really genuinely understand the history and politics of places like Israel
  • Get excited by film hype
  • Enjoy porn, um, afterwards
  • Talk on the phone without doing anything else
  • Write legibly, after years of computer based doing everything

Merry Christmas, probably.

2 Responses to “ 50 Things I Can’t Do ”

  1. Lorna Forde on December 23, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    i drew a penis on a business studies exam once. i got sent to the guidance counsellor. apparently it wasnt an appropriate response to “What is an ombudsman”. i still dont know. you’d think they would have actually told me rather than just telling me i had something wrong with my brain. and that is how i ended up in art college and then became an accountant.

  2. Phil H on December 23, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Merry Christmas, NotSteve.

    I can’t stop biting my nails. I also can’t go onto my computer with the intention of doing work, and resist checking my emails and every blog I read.

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