Jim's Cafe - Sunday, 15 June 2025

I’m a self-taught vocalist and I don’t think my voice has changed noticeably, although my timbre is more controlled from having developed the neuromuscular connections that make it possible to carry a tune.

I started out utterly terrible. I had enough instrumental practice to know I was out of tune, but not enough control over the pitch that came out of my mouth.


So, if you want to sing, I would say go for it, as long as you want it enough to suffer through the steep learning curve. I used to be intimidated by the fact that I was worse than a beginner, but I lost my self consciousness through karaoke. YMMV, of course.

A downfall of my studies, though, is that I cannot refrain from singing along with any song that I know I can perform. I’m singing in grocery stores, restaurants, and anywhere else that has popular music in the background, lol. I am no fun to carpool with!

Hehe. I was a Tuba player in the High School orchestral and marching band. I wanted to be a Tubist from the first time I saw one. It wasn’t conscious to me at the time, but it is the largest wind instrument in the orchestra, meaning that I could hide behind it. I am pretty sure none of us in the bass clef brass section were too popular, though. Generally the band geeks fell somewhere between the stoners and the D&D players in the social hierarchy, lol.

It worked out very fortunately for me, because I wanted to join jazz band. They needed a bassist, and I could read bass clef, which started me on the instrument that is my true passion.

Tysm for tagging me and posting this cafe Inastorm

I don’t really have much talent with anything. I can type fairly fast on a regular, full sized keyboard, and some people have said I seem to be a good writer, so I guess those are some talents/skills I have.

@bubblebear thank you for that post it made me laugh 🙂 I used to think I was pretty good at it but one of my son's girlfriends was so much better at burping, I had to quit.

Thans for the tags @Inastorm and @Kiwi2016.
I've been told, and at uni I had the grades to indicate, that when I have to I can write pretty well. Writing essays and such for class assignments is as far as I took it. I'm envious! - in a good way - of @Licorice having published novels. Being a successful writer would be a dream come true.

Other than painting and drawing and having a knack for cooking I can't do much. I sell paintings, so there's that.

I grew up playing the piano, classical and some jazz, I don't know if that counts as a talent because I didn't just grasp it, I had to practice every day. As for weird talents, I find things other people have lost. Though not very good at it I can juggle and do a few minutes of it most every day.

I can knit and crochet.

I am learning French!

I have zero musical talent lol

Well I can play guitar....and clarinet.

I can touch my wrist with my thumb. Don't know if it is a party trick or not.





Probably I would go with singing or learn to dance something.

I used to be a decent singer and barely acceptable guitarist. I also used to be able to draw kinda. I mean, I wasn’t great at any of these things, but I was passable.

Now I don’t really have use of my dominant hand, and have vocal changes that I don’t think will ever go away, so I don’t do any of that anymore.

I’ve started playing chess again, and am thinking about getting back into stand-up comedy; both things I dabbled in before. Maybe in a few years, I’ll be able to tell you I’m good at one of those.

What talent do you have, this could be a skill or maybe a party trick?

Does driving people up the wall count? On the home side I have always been told I am great at carpentry whether creating, repairing or customizing. I can track any critter in the woods out here for the freezer and skillet or pot. At work it is more nuts and bolts analyzing effects in an IT setting that people way above me on skills miss. Like Peter Falk in Columbo I will catch the nonsense nothing that hoses up things down the road by intuition.

If you could learn any talent or skill, what would it be?

I do wish I was more mechanical, but sadly I am doing good to know how to pump gas and drive a car. LOL

Thanks for tagging me @Inastorm

I don't really have any talents unless you count making mistakes with every decision in life. It seems no matter what choice I make something " bad " will happen as a result.
At best I'm a mediocre person with no real accomplishments.

Thats pretty great! i thought it was only me that could do that well... i learned it because i used it to calm myself after one of the kids pissed me off as a child. Lol

Ty for opening and the tag @Inastorm

Talent... i'm a puppeteer.

Learning... ASL fluently as well as Italian. Also learn all musical instruments.

Hi All, missed the whole day, but w8shing you all wonferfull night and beatuful week ahead.

In my case I was practicing every roadside sobriety test that I ever heard of, one of which being the reverse alphabet trick. Luckily never needed it for a roadside test, lol.

Now I use a certain mantra from Tibetan practice to calm me down sometimes. It's 100 syllables long, so usually by the time I have rattled it off for three repetitions, I've calmed down somewhat. I am pretty sure the mantra did not originate in Tibet, but it has gained the widest audience there.

What talent do I have: I am honest, straightforward, and blunt.
What would I like to learn: to be more polite and tactful.

Thanks @Inastorm !

I can use a knife or fork in either hand equally well. Also, I can tie my shoes standing on one leg.

(I never thought of these as talents, but some people pointed out to me that what I was doing was highly unusual! 😂)

I don't know kung-fu. I want to learn it. 👍

And, as for a party trick; I can pop a lot of bones out of and back into their sockets at will.

Turns out I really shouldn’t though. Way I see it is, if god wanted me to take better care of my body then he shouldn’t have given me such a shitty one.

I’d like to think I’m proficient at writing. It’s one of the few subjects in school that I actually had an interest in getting better at, even though the classes themselves were restrictive and tedious.

Is that what the medicos call hyper mobility? In yoga class, certain poses need to be adjusted for hyper mobile joints to prevent hyper extension, which I infer to be poor practice.

Yeah, turns out the reason I can do it is because I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

It’s also the reason why I bruise very easily.

There are abnormalities in collagen, in connective tissue. It also makes me prone to heart attacks and brain hemorrhages, so you know…

Wow, that sounds unpleasant. Hoping it’s manageable. You have mentioned having a major stroke, so a heart attack or brain hemorrhage would be the last thing you need. Well, the last thing anyone would need, but especially you -I think .