catapult magazine

Top Ten re: skills

by Amanda McClendon

Top Ten Skills I Want to Learn Before I Die

1. Sewing: My mom had a sewing machine when I was a kid and she used to make all sorts of stuff?curtains, doll clothes, the occasional dress. She would drag me to the fabric store every so often and I’d spend most of my time flipping through the costume sections of all the pattern catalogs, wondering how hard it would be to make a princess costume. We sold the sewing machine when I was about twelve, after my mom’s fibromyalgia progressed too far for her to use it anymore…some part of me wishes we hadn’t.
2. Cooking: I can’t cook to save my life, actually. I can bake pretty well?well enough to run a small business making bread for the other girls in my dorm my sophomore year of college?but I’m so bad at cooking that I burn grilled cheese if I’m not careful. Often the TV’s on while I’m cooking, so you can see where this is going. My dad tried to teach me, but I was never interested enough.
3. Playing piano: I took four weeks of lessons when I was six, and then we moved. (Yeah, I don’t know why my parents agreed to that, either.) When we got down here to Houston, I decided it was boring and I didn’t want to do it anymore.
4. Tap dancing: See #3.
5. Crocheting: Tried to teach myself once, but it was before I knew how to tie slip knots, and I got a little annoyed with myself for not being able to figure it out.
6. Speaking fluent Spanish: You’d think that after four years of classes, this would have happened by now…
7. Fishing: This is one of those crazy things my dad always talked about us doing, but it never happened. I lost interest, even though I had this awesome Snoopy fishing pole (Woodstock served as the bobber. How cool is that).
8. Saving money: Why don’t I? Because I have this weird mindset that if there’s money available, I ought to spend it all. Am I a moron? Of course.
9. Mathematics: I’m a writer. Enough said, I think.
10. Discipline. Focus. Selflessness. Love. Passion.