Unearthing men’s hidden talents that the world overlooks

The other day I was in a pub and the deejay was playing a beautiful party mix, one of those mixes that feature vuvuzelas and a lady who repeatedly says, “make it stop!” over the song. Just as one song ended and another was being teased, I told my pal the song coming up next, and he was surprised I could guess it right.

I said it was not guess work. I told him it’s my hidden talent — that I can identify a song by the first opening beat. I found out long ago that most people can’t do this. That some people will only identify a song by the chorus and that’s always when the song is almost half in, which is pointless really.

Many days I have lingered in bed in the morning wondering how I can monetise this unique talent. Of course my friend refused to recognise it as a unique talent, let alone call it one. (Petty jealousy). So we argued about that for a bit. Later, I left the pub, went home, sat on my desk, and listed a whole bunch of talents — a guy might have -- that might be dismissed as non-talent.

Take whistling for instance, a most underrated talent. Turns out there are grown men who can’t whistle, which is quite tragic because there is something manly about whistling. Let’s say you were a burglar and you “let yourself” into a house that you thought had nobody and heard the shower running. Would you know who is showering? But if you heard someone whistling, you would know that most likely it’s a man in that shower because when did you last hear mama Junior whistle in the shower? (She saves her breathe for other things). So, anyway, you see how whistling can chase away a burglar and save your microwave?

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a dripping tap? There is nothing as annoying as a dripping tap. Nothing. Not even the proverbial nagging woman in the Bible. Drip, drip. Drip, drip. I suspect a dripping tap was used as a torture technique in Guantánamo Bay. How could they not? Sometimes tying a polythene around the tap doesn’t always solve the problem. Neither is ignoring it, it turns out. And so it takes a real talent to fix the dripping tap problem in the middle of the night. Want to know why? Of course you do, it’s a rare talent.

Swimming is another underrated talent. There are so many grown men who go down to Coast to splash in baby pools, poking out the eyes of babies or just floating in the beach like lazy teenage whales. We are talking about grown men who are heads of departments. Sometimes when I go for parents/ teacher meetings and I see those annoying chaps who have to comment on everything, I usually think to myself reassuringly, “I bet he can’t swim, this one with ashy knuckles.” Because nature has a way of balancing everything out. But not all 35-years-old can swim. It’s a talent.

Making a campfire is easy, right? You gather some twigs or logs, you pour some little paraffin (if you have some) and light it, then you stand over it proudly with your arms akimbo. If you go to one of those luxury camps that light a fireplace for you two lovebirds, it’s your responsibility to make sure that the fire is burning. You don’t want to be the guy who calls 0 on the phone for some poor guy to walk down to your room to stoke the fire for you while you pretend to be romantic. Truth is most chaps might know how to start a fire but they can’t stoke a fire. And stoking a fire is directly linked to keeping the proverbial fire burning. (This is not peer reviewed).

The world will never know which men could jump-start a manual car, and which men couldn’t. Automatic cars have robbed a lot of men the chance to show off their technical side. Which is a shame really because anybody with Google and 2MBs on their phones for Google can use a jumper cable.

Another underrated talent for men is making up a story about where babies come from. You must be sniggering dismissively but wait until your child just ambushes you with that question — where do babies come from — just as you are sitting there blowing your tea on a Sunday evening. If you are a normal guy who hates his tea being interrupted, you will simply say, “go ask mummy” and shoo the little talking head away. But if you have a real talent, you won’t even blink, and by the time you have placed your cup of tea on the table; you will have come up with a brilliant tale. You know you have talent if you tell them, “Jamaica.”