There are many things I can't do at all well - throwing is one of them. I was always well below average at throwing a ball, a stone or a javelin; and easily prone to hurt my shoulder if I tried*. I am distinctly sub-par at foreign languages. I have an aesthetic blind-spot for sculpture. And so on...
But I have sometimes discovered a built-in natural ability in some activities.
The thing is, you don't know you have this, until you try the thing. And, even then, the ability does not always go along with an interest or drive to succeed in that domain.
I had a natural ability as a journal editor and a genuine interest in the job.
While I was put in charge of Medical Hypothesis, I found the work congenial, could do it efficiently, and the journal did very well - such that I was awarded two significant performance related salary increases.
(Of course, ability and success did not stop me for being sacked when I transgressed PC taboos!)
Another thing I seemed naturally gifted at, was clay pigeon shooting - which did not interest me as a sport, and which I did only once, on holiday in Ireland.
Clay pigeon shooting uses a double-barrelled shotgun to blast ceramic discs - shaped like saucers - of approximately five inches diameter.
These discs are fired out of a spring-loaded device two at a time; so they can fly away from the shooter, across his vision from one side to the other, or from in-front and passing backwards over his head.
I had never touched or fired a shotgun in my life; but I achieved almost perfect results in this weird sport. I even managed to hit both discs (one after the other, with each barrel) when they were going sideways, or backwards (which was apparently the most difficult, in that nobody else managed to hit any of the clays, during this procedure).
I've no idea how I accomplished this feat; especially the "deflection" aiming - which is pointing the gun the right amount ahead-of, and above, the thing aimed at, to allow for the elapsing of time before the shots arrive, and their gravitational drop of the shot.
But then, as I mentioned, it just came naturally.
I never did the sport again - partly because of indifference, partly because it was way too expensive to be affordable or worthwhile. But the experience illustrated how people sometimes have some very strange natural aptitudes and I never would have imagined this was one of mine except for the accident of going on holiday to visit a friend, who had a friend, who was all set-up for clay pigeon shooting - and generous enough to let the rest of us do it for nothing.
*Interestingly, I inherited this deficit from my father, who was (in most respects) an exceptional all-round athlete - PE teacher, A1-fit infantryman - top performer of his basic-training intake, and a semi-professional football (soccer) player in the highly competitive Northern Alliance League. But he couldn't throw. Unfortunately, I inherited the deficit, but not the all-round sports ability.
9 comments:
When I was young, we had a family friend who was just the opposite. He was an FBI agent and ex-Marine, a good all-around athlete, and an excellent marksman when it came to everything *except* shooting clay pigeons, at which he was absolutely terrible.
Shooting is expensive in the UK? I learned with my dad's now 100 year old shotgun. I could walk to the range, what's it like in old Blighty?
I have heard that people who have learned to shoot rifles have to un-learn nearly everything in order to use a shotgun, and tend to be bad at the shotgun until this has happened.
As a total novice (apart from a couple of days attacking starlings and rabbits with a .22 air-rifle on my Great Uncle's farm, about a decade earlier) I had That advantage.
According to the encyclopaedic Jack Hargreaves - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hargreaves - on a TV programme with this subject matter, this is because a shotgun isn't aimed like a rifle - and the shotgunner is not supposed to be aware of the gun itself - instead the clay P shooter is supposed to focus on whatever is being shot at.
@BH - "what's it like in old Blighty?" I have no idea. This was decades ago.
But at the time (in Ireland, at any rate) both cartridges and clays were pretty expensive, and lots of both were needed per session - plus there was joining some kind of club and commuting to a suitable venue, and getting hold of a gun by buying or renting I suppose...
Altogether, the business was completely out of the question.
That's interesting. I suppose that's what happened when airplanes were new, some people found out they were good at flying them.
It's also interesting when people aren't naturally skilled but have a set of other talents that they use to become good at something in an unusual way.
@NLR "interesting when people aren't naturally skilled but have a set of other talents that they use to become good at something in an unusual way."
Bowling in cricket often features people like that - including the Sri Lankan spinner Muralitharan, a contender for the greatest bowler of all time; who had a permanently bent right arm, a shoulder that rotated to an extreme degree, and wrist so flexible that his hand could fold back onto his arm.
A great Indian spinner, Chandrasekhar, bowled with an arm withered by polio.
I wonder, do you have a massive spike in Spatial Reasoning on intelligence tests?
@Derek - No. I'm mainly verbal.
Fascinating. Clay pigeon shooting is one of the most difficult feats in marksmanship. As a Canadian who grew up in a relatively remote area, firearms were as common as shovels (but murder almost unheard of). We all learned to shoot because we were only a generation or so removed from people who had to shoot in order to obtain enough protein. Almost anyone can become proficient enough to hit a target with a rifle within 100-200 yards. A moving target is far more difficult. Two moving targets moving at speed at different angles -- this is indeed something that requires a native cognitive capacity few people natively possess fully-formed, and which takes many years to acquire for the average person. I lack that capability, however it turns out I have a somewhat related native skill when it comes to long-range precision shooting. This involves hitting a "man-sized" steel target 800 or more yards away. Beyond about 1000 yards one must mentally take into account the fact that the earth rotates under the bullet during flight (along with a great many other factors affecting ballistic behaviour). There are hand-held computers used by military people who do this sort of thing (I have no connection to anything military), but people were able to make such shots long before computers existed. I suspect there are many such similar areas in the field of archery. Are there any archers here?
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