Knowing your strengths

“Are you good at setting watches?” someone at work asked this morning. What an odd question. I can honestly say that no one has ever asked me such a thing before. I have never contemplated my watch-setting prowess. I had no idea how to answer. I don’t know if I am good at setting watches. I was absent the day they administered the watch-setting test.

“I’m not sure if I am good at setting watches,” I admitted.

“Oh,” my coworker replied, disappointed. “I am very bad at setting watches.”

What a great thing to know about yourself. Don’t you wish you knew your own strengths so intimately? To know down to such minute (pun totally intended) detail the things that you are good and bad at doing?

A friend said to me recently that his roommate is “efficient with dishes.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but my interpretation is that the roommate makes entire meals in one pot and reuses the same glass all week long. That is an interesting quality to note in someone else. I have never gauged someone’s dish efficiency. I wonder what the scale is for that sort of thing.

Someone recently told me that he was “bad with pronouns.” In those complex sentences where pronouns are flung about all willy nilly, he would often get confused and refer to the hims as hers and the shes as hes. I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t done the he/she flip flop when saying something like, “She told him that he was going with her, but he shouldn’t have been the one telling her. I mean him. I mean...you know what I mean.” I only know one person who has gone so far as to brand himself “bad with pronouns” after such a sentence. It seems a little harsh.

Personally, I’d cut you a break over a little pronoun mix up. And I am a grammar Nazi, so the fact that I’ll let you off the hook means a lot. But don’t try to get away with using a pronoun without a clear antecedent. That is when I’ll come get you.