For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
Anything that requires moderate hand-to-eye coordination.
So I was always the worst amongst my buddies at sports, which I hadn’t associated with my deficiency yet… then, when I joined the army and realized that, besides running (and swimming, because I lived in front of a pool for most of my childhood), anything that required technique and skill was gonna take me 5x the time to learn compared to my comrades (rope climbing even at my strongest and slimmest, rifle assembly and disassembly, for example) and even then I was just barely passing. Then I tried getting a driver’s license whilst still in the army, which was basically a gift in all but name, and damn did I suck at driving. I still do, just less so. 🤣
Thankfully I married a somewhat handy woman. 🤷♂️
I’m the same way! I don’t know about you, but when I was an adult, I learned about dyspraxia (a pretty common coordination/balance/motor disorder - used to be called ‘clumsy child syndrome’ lol) and having poor proprioception (which is the sense of being able to automatically know and tell where exactly your body parts are in relation to eachother and to other things, where this thing is in relation to that other thing, etc. without really having to think about it) and reading and learning about those helped explain a LOT for me.
I just thought I’d mention it in case it helps you! It really helped me feel less broken and helped me understand myself better, and how to work with it instead of trying to force myself to be ‘normal,’ when it’s not a matter of ‘not trying hard enough’ like so many people told me it was as a youngin’, etc. Anywho, you are soo not alone! :)
Just to chime in, I’d say I have very high propioception, but I have a hard time getting my head out of the way of my body. So I will do weird things like drop a spatula but catch it before it falls a foot because I’m thinking through the process of holding the spatula, and fumble it, but when it falls I’m just thinking “catch the spatula” and do it spectacularly. So I was also a clumsy child, and have the scars to prove it, but mostly because I was thinking about everything I was doing.
Oh zip, thanks for the extended explanation and encouraging words. I always just saw it as the result of my lack of focus and hyperactivity but maybe it’s something else, just by itself… I guess I’ll have to get checked 🙃. And indeed we are not alone!