Did you know I’m a genius about so many things?

Not to brag, but I’m basically a walking museum exhibit of amazing talents. While millennials can memorize 47 passwords and Gen Z is out there making TikToks and binge-watching YouTube, I can do things that require patience, dexterity and just the right amount of gas pedal to clutch precision. 

For instance, I can use a rotary dial without getting finger cramps, I can navigate across the country using a paper map and, more impressively, fold it back up again. I’ve memorized 10-digit phone numbers, programmed a VCR and made a school book cover out of a brown grocery bag with perfect corners.

I can write in cursive, use the Dewey Decimal System and pop the clutch on a 1973 VW Bug. I can correct a typo with White-Out and perfectly splice a cassette tape with Scotch tape.

I once fixed a TV by smacking it, ran copies on a mimeograph machine (and maybe got high on the fumes) and learned how to count change back without a calculator. I’ve made prank calls, threaded needles and slept for hours lying on a sleeping bag while riding in the back of a pickup.

If that’s not enough, I can dim headlights with my foot, rewind a cassette with a pencil and send a message through a refused collect call.

My toolbox of genius also includes making popcorn on the stovetop, chipping ice out of a freezer with a hammer and developing Polaroid photos under my armpit, because that’s just good science. I’ve channel surfed through all three TV stations, talked on the phone with the cord under the closet door, pumped gas before paying and scraped ice from a windshield with a cassette case for an entire winter. 

Sure, I can’t figure out how to change the Netflix password without locking everyone out, but I can climb through a barbed wire fence unscathed, iron a patch on the knee of my jeans and drink from a pull-tab can without swallowing the tab, which, frankly, should earn me a medal.

Maybe a couple of those skills don’t matter much anymore, but they remind me of a time when we actually touched the world by writing real letters with real stamps we licked. We even used to drop in on our neighbors without calling and ate dinner together around a table, with no TV in sight. There’s something satisfying about that.

And if progress means forgetting how to do those things, well … I’ll be over here rewinding my memories with a pencil.