Things We Should Probably Know How to Do
The September issue of Texas Monthly focuses on what it’s like to raise and educate children in Texas, and one of the stories looks at three home-schooled boys (ages 15, 13, and 11) who live on a ranch that’s virtually “untouched by the modern world.” The boys spend much of their time caring for the animals on the farm, hunting mountain lions, swimming in a water tank under a windmill, wrestling, and starting a cattle business with the goal of finishing high school with a solid business they can rely on to generate income. There is no mention of college—they know they want to be ranchers and hunting guides as adults.
Here are things the boys know how to do: drag calves in a pen, ear notch, castrate, vaccinate, brand, and sort cattle. They can rope cattle, but also bobcats and wild pigs. They can weld metal, and they can shoot a gun. They can drive a stick shift. They can change the oil in a Jeep, plug a flat, and change a tire. They can operate a front-end loader, a bulldozer, hookup a gooseneck trailer, trim horseshoes, set traps, braid rawhide, mimic an elk call, and identify different species of grass. They can do the two-step, play chess, make scrambled eggs, and wiggle their ears.
They can do a lot of things that I should probably know how to do—not castrate cattle, but certainly change a flat tire or drive a stick shift. I have done both of those things, but only with another person’s help, and not masterfully. I’ll still stall the car while driving stick.
Obviously, I don’t have any plans to be a rancher, so a lot of the skills those boys have aren’t applicable to me, but there probably are a lot of things we should know how to do, but aren’t taught in school. Like:
1. Do the heimlich maneuver (and probably how to perform it on yourself). Also, perform CPR, and basic First Aid.
2. Build a fire
3. Jumpstart a car
4. Read a map
5. Swim
6. Hold a baby
I did a quick search to see if I could take a quick class on how to properly change a tire, specifically at the Brooklyn Brainery, which offers classes on how to do things like identify trees and alter and sew your clothes—useful! But, the class I thought was on changing a bike tire ended up being this one.
What other things should we all know how to do?
Do your laundry!
I had to teach multiple friends how to use a washer & dryer in my college dorms. NOT OK.
@down the rabbit hole Learn how to operate all cleaning devices. My ex boyfriend asked me once how to turn on the vacuum we had for THREE YEARS and I laughed in his face.
I’m always baffled by the way public high school health classes spend year after year tediously telling students not to do drugs or have sex, and never considers teaching them CPR and the Heimlich. It would take like two classes and be so much more useful!
@darklingplain we learned CPR in health class!
the creepy mannequins we used caused one of my friends to have an anxiety attack :(
Your last link leads to some general overview, not a specific class…
Fixed! Thank you.
* Balance a checkbook.
* Know how to interpret a credit card statement (had to teach someone in college how to do that. Person thought that just paying the minimum balance was ok.)
* Sew a button on a shirt.
(I don’t know how to swim, though.)
feed yourself mindfully. lack of education about nutrition is a huge problem.
@wearitcounts er. no pun intended.
@wearitcounts Cook, period.
@selenana AMEN.
That whole list of things (CPR, etc) I learned how to do in Girl Scouts! (Well, ok I already knew how to swim before I started in Scouting at age 5 but I took swim lessons at Scout Camp)Such a valuable resource to me.
I think everyone should know how to balance their checkbook and sew before leaving high school and also do their laundry (including ironing!) And maybe other basic household maintenance things like washing dishes and sweeping because I swear I’ve lived with people who don’t know how to do those things. Then I wonder to myself what kind of magical childhood they had where they didn’t have to do chores.
@LizF I had a roommate in college whose mother didn’t “let her” or anyone else in the family do the laundry so she didn’t know how to and always brought it up home to get it done. I still marvel at the wonder of not being allowed to do a chore.
Not the only person who told me they had simply never washed clothes or cleaned a bathroom. My mom was a SAHM for most of my childhood and I still learned this stuff!
@KatNotCat My mom’s like that. NO ONE touches her washing machine. Even now, she’d rather do my laundry when I’m visiting than have me mess with her machine, and god forbid I sneak in and do my own laundry and one of the settings doesn’t get changed back. Laundry is practically the only household chore she does the majority of, but she guards it ferociously.
I can do all those things (on your list)! I’ve been surprised to learn how many people don’t know how to jump start a car or even where their battery is. I want to learn more apocalypse training skillz.
@selenana I know for a fact there are dudes who offer like apocalypse training weekends, at least in the U.S.
I am personally counting on being immune to the zombie virus and waiting it out.
Things I’ve taught: How to cook pasta. How to change a diaper. How to tie a square knot and a slipknot. How to cross-multiply fractions (useful for scaling recipes). How to use a compass.
Things I’d like to learn: How to drive a car (:/) Also I’d like to take a calculus class. I never did it in high school and feel like it really limited my career choices.
I would just like to give props to my highschool health class for certifying all of us in CPR. I would not, however, feel comfortable trying to do it today.
Do kids today learn how to touch type? I learned typing in 7th grade on ACTUAL TYPEWRITERS (I’m not that old, my school was just poor) and it’s seriously one of the most useful skills I have.
@stuffisthings No. I am a decent typist (no I’m not, 65 WPM) but that is because I just go for it and type a lot and then clean up my mistakes later. Plus I invented my own typing methodology: five fingers on the left hand, two on my right?
Basically, I don’t know anyone my age who actually learned to touch type successfully.
@stuffisthings I feel like anybody who used AIM or similar programs in middle/high school can probably type pretty quickly, even if they developed a nonstandard method for themselves. How quickly do you need to type these days anyway, if you’re not a court reporter?
@cuminafterall AIM! It helps that we’ve convinced the greater public to accept our most common speed spelling mistakes as functional english.
@stuffisthings I think they often do. Everyone I know my age did, and typing has only become more important since then. I know my old school district still offers keyboarding as an elective. I learned in elementary school on these keyboards with teeeeeeny screens attached. My parents also had me practice at home on our PC. Thanks, Mavis Beacon!
@stuffisthings i’m totally with you. i learned to touch type in 7th grade and i’m consistently able to do things better and faster at work than some of my colleagues who favor the “i sorta know where all the keys are and use my dominant fingers” method.
@bibliostitute let’s add to this list, “know how and when to use all manner of punctuation.”
@bibliostitute i’m with you on learning to type fast on AIM/MSN!
I don’t know how fast you “need” to type but I got the job I have today because I can type fast enough to keep up with my boss’ speed dictation (about 120 wpm)
kinda funny because needing to type quickly has nothing to do with my job. sigh.
@probs I had Mavis Beacon too! But I still don’t “officially” touch type. I dunno what I do, but it gets the job done.
@bibliostitute Touch typing isn’t the same as “typing fast” – the real benefit is not having to look. Being able to transcribe shit, or to to type while talking to someone, or to be basically doing anything with your eyes while typing, is super great!
@deepomega Sure, but the one follows from the other. Touch typing allows one to transcribe or type and talk; it also allows you, as was said over and over again in various computer labs that weren’t actually designed to teach touch typing (we could ALWAYS see the keyboards!), to type at a higher WPM which will get you the jobs one day.
Of course, at that early age I wanted instead to be an itinerant poem man and/or a dinosaur (1st grade computer lab failure!). So I wasn’t worried either way about “the jobs.”
@deepomega I thought touch typing was just being taught to use the proper fingers – the more you know~!
(I have no idea how consistently this is taught, but my school did have a program. I also played a lot of sticky bear typing when I was a kid – hilarious MS-DOS game)
@Megano! was mavis beacon the program that taught you to associate words with the letters in columns? Like “even dogs can’t!” and “peanuts!”
P is the only key I do not type properly with because I have a fucked up right pinky that can’t reach far enough. ISN’T THAT FASCINATING
@deepomega Yeah what I meant by my question was: obviously Kids These Days ™ can type fast, but can they type properly and without looking at their hands?
@probs I learned how to touch type thanks to Mavis Beacon / my 7th grade business skills class / in which we also learned to make neon flashing PowerPoint slide shows / html websites full of super sparkly/animated/clip arty icons.
@rimy (I use all of my fingers properly and don’t look at the keyboard although I still have to look at the numbers)
I can drive a stick shift, make scrambled eggs, and do an emergency dismount off a horse, but when I moved to the States I had to google how to fill out a check (they’re really not used in most other countries). Education gaps, we all have them…
@Poppy Really?! So before debit/credit cards, did other countries just use cash, or did checks just fall by the wayside sooner in other countries than they have in the US?
@Poppy …but can you do them all at the same time?
@polka dots vs stripes I don’t think they ever used checks here? (Japan.) People don’t really know what they are. Don’t really use debit cards very much either. Cash, or bank transfers.
@stuffisthings Yes! Wait…no. Sorry, got confused.
@polka dots vs stripes Really really! I think my home country (New Zealand) just gave up on checks really quickly. I remember my parents having a checkbook when I was little, but I think New Zealand was one of the first places in the world to get debit cards and EFTPOS. I don’t remember a time before ATMs (I was born in 1983).
Also, nobody in New Zealand would understand what a check was, because we spell it cheque. :)
I have the worst luck with tires. In the past year, I’ve had to change 3 flats. Two of them were rental trucks, and one the tires had gone a grand total of 400 km before it went flat on me. I’m getting pretty good at changing them, but the rental guy refuses to believe I can do it on my own and keeps asking who I got to do it for me. Asshole.
Also, everyone should learn to sharpen knives. Dull kitchen knives are a hazard.
Trimming horseshoes = ???. Trimming hooves = a task that actually exists.
I am waiting for the day when no one needs to know how to drive a stick. People always tell me I should learn “in case there is an emergency and that’s the only kind of car available.” But when has that EVER happened?
@blueblazes Well I drive a stick because no one else seems to and it means no one tries to use my car to get more beer for the party, or whatever. Stickshift=instant misanthropy!
@bibliostitute hahaha i have a coupe because then it’s never my car that’s used for group outings/road trips.
@blueblazes This happened to a friend of mine! Out in the Catskills, the person who owned the car was suddenly incapable of driving. I think they just sat around in the mountains uselessly for a few hours until he could drive again.
Are people still up in arms about kids not learning cursive anymore?
1. OMG, the dog leaping about in that photo – too wonderful
2. Actual suggestion: how to clean a bathroom properly.
I completely agree with the suggestions raised here about how to cook a few meals, do laundry and so forth are really good suggestions. I have had to cohabitate with some complete filth-monsters in my time, however, and this (others not knowing how to clean a bathroom) was the most important to me at a fragile point in my life.
My friends and I have discussed opening a life skills-based middle school (or maybe just summer camp?) that teaches the regular middle school stuff primarily via (a) farming and (b) programming, as well as many of the things listed above.