Previous Life Skills

Scott Hardie | April 23, 2008
You probably have an unusual talent in something trivial, like remembering the casts of old TV sitcoms, or shaking exactly two aspirin out of the bottle every time, or identifying a precise hue of lipstick at a glance. I heard a theory today that these are remnants from a past life, where they were related to your profession. Even if we don't believe in reincarnation, it might be fun to speculate: What is your useless skill, and what did you do to learn it in a previous life?

Amy Austin | April 23, 2008
Heheheh...

With all the talk about "elitism" lately, I think I'll take a cop-out here and say that I'm pretty skilled at knowing more than others... and spending money... therefore, I *must* have been a monarch!
(Isn't this what all believers in past lives think... that they were royalty? ;-D)

Amy Austin | April 23, 2008
(Actually not true, btw... just making an easy joke, a bit at my own expense. Maybe this means I was, in fact, a court jester? No... more likely, based on my love of eating when life seems good and my current knack for drawing the negative... court *taster*! ;-D)

Steve West | April 23, 2008
If you've seen the film Little Man Tate, there's a scene in which a little boy genius looks at a pool table and sees in his mind all the shot possibilities defined by force vectors and angles of incidence all color coded and multiplied. That's how I see a pool table also but what makes that a useless talent is my ambivalence toward the game itself. I get little enjoyment from playing it although I am reasonably good at it. Combine that with the obvious useless talent of being able to crack my left thumb knuckle repeatedly (about once per second) for an indeterminate length of time. It starts to hurt after about thirty times in a row. This leads me to conclude that I was formerly a pool hustler (although not a very good one) who got caught hustling and had my hand broken à la Paul Newman in The Hustler. My equally useless skill of being able to measure dry cooking ingredients in my palm instead of using measuring spoons (I don't cook), leads to my prison stay where I became a coolie working in the prison kitchen.. But not being a tough guy, I soon became the boyfriend of the guy with the most cigarettes. Whew! Boy am I glad that life is over.

Amy Austin | April 23, 2008
LOL! I *knew* I was looking forward to your contribution to the discussion...

Aaron Shurtleff | April 23, 2008
Hmmm...well, I do have a good memory for music lyrics, which means I was probably a musician of some sort. My current mental issues mean I probably did a lot of drugs, and I'm still trippin' in this life. My freakish desire to not fit in now probably means I was a rebel in my previous life.

I'm pretty much the reincarnation of Janis Joplin. Wonder if I can get any royalties out of it...

Denise Sawicki | April 23, 2008
Well I may have been extremely poor and doing menial labor, as I have an uncanny ability to not spend money and to be entertained doing extremely boring things.