What's your useless talent?

In D.C. last summer I was bored and bitter (hey! you would be too if you had to live in a perpetual state of bad hair horror. step off.), but really did enjoy living with the girls. In our post-newsroom evening conversations we managed to cover a lot - the stinkiness of our living room, the filth of our landlady's basement abode, the conspiracy of the downward-creeping thermostat. During one of our chats I posed this question: What's your useless talent? I bring this up now because I just realized what my TRUE useless talent is:

I can identify by name (common not scientific) the names of many plants and flowers and trees that I have no business knowing the names of, being a person with a decidedly brown thumb.

My roommate K. says she has a talent for being an exceptional party guest, and N. extolls her ability to catch random objects when thrown in her general direction.

LD did not live with us, but I asked her anyway.... she is a fashion afficionado, apparently. She does the same thing that I do with plants with fashion designers and clothing.

I didn't ask Allison, but I'm going to speak for her. She can hear a rap song once and know all the words thereafter. Inexplicable. She does the same with numbers - phone numbers, social security numbers, house numbers, you name it.

As for my other two D.C. roommates, well, they never did commit. Our stoic M-dawg momentarily considered this frivolous inquiry, and then, matter-of-fact and without a hint of humor said, "I don't have one. All my talents are useful."

I thought her response lacked creativity.

She is now living in Tokyo with a great job reporting for a well-known American media outlet.

Sigh...it's just not a world for the creative or the uselessly talented.