What is something that most people do the wrong way but that you definitely and positively do the right way?

I’m starting to see a crowd: many people holding sticks with bristles and a white swirl. The vision disappears into a dark place. Then a cacophony. That’s it.

Vote

I say please and thank you. Also I don’t use text speak on FaceBook birthday wishes.

GQ, @Jeruba! :-D

Pronounce my last name.

Bake brownies. I am known far and wide as the only maker of truly great brownies in the universe. (Even the Martians agree.)

Using Facebook. When you picture a person my age using Facebook, what’s in your mind? A shitton of selfies? A pseudo-intellectual post to show off how enlightened they are? A vague post about how messed up life is for attention?

I see Facebook as just a tool to connect people and I use it exactly that way. I can’t get the appeal of showing off there. I think it has a lot to do with me losing the Facebook popularity contest before it even started. And because I lost, I couldn’t participate, so I became the observer and saw through a lot of absurd things people went crazy about. And I decided that they weren’t worth the effort in the first place. While people my age sometimes whine about how there is no way anyone can quit Facebook, I have never been addicted in the first place.

Come to a full stop.

@Mimishu1995, I appreciate the way that you use Facebook, I tend to use it that way too, but I certainly don’t see it as the definitive right way, just the way I choose to use it. I think that it is too fluid a platform to be so pigeonholed.

Ok, let’s clarify. I was thinking of things like this: parallel park; chop an onion; hang the lights on a Christmas tree; prune a rose bush; swaddle a baby; scramble an egg; take Warrior 2 pose; dress a turkey; spell “definitely.”

These are all things that lots of people do, and that you might have seen them do wrong (by your measure).

If you’ve ever said, “You’re doing it the hard way. Let me show you how I do it,” your special skill should probably be on this list.

@Jeruba I don’t have that kind of hubris. I may have thought that, but I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anyone.

@janbb, I bet your brownies speak for themselves.

@Jeruba They are very persuasive!

@janbb, feel free to persuade me!

I suppose I teach computer well, to inexperienced users. I help teach Dave Ramsey tips sometimes. I help people cook if they want to learn. I’m great at spoiling dogs rotten.

Chop an onion. I can do the task in just seconds, usually before my eyes start to water.

Grocery shop and prep meals for a week or a month, by buying ingredients that will work in multiple meals, and prepping most of the vegetables ahead of time, to make fixing a lunch, or making dinner quicker and easier when the time comes to do that task.

People are always complaining that they don’t have time to cook/eat healthy meals, so they end up eating fast food every day. If they planned out in advance what they were going to make, and chose healthy meals that have common ingredients, and prepped as much ahead of time as they could, they would be easily able to eat, and cook, healthy meals every day, without the fuss of having to start each meal from the very beginning.

Tupperware, and ziplock bags are your friend, as are the concept of washing and chopping vegetables, and grating cheese, and boiling eggs ahead of time, so it’s all ready to use.

Like this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f8/5d/f3/f85df33f79f230188c22eccc5655532b.jpg

@Kardamom, isn’t it true that vegetables keep better if they’re put away without washing?—something about a protective coating that slows decomposition? And don’t they also spoil quicker once they’ve been cut up?

I defer to your cooking expertise, so I’m just asking. Has the wisdom I’ve always heard, of keeping them intact until it’s time to cut them up and use them, incorrect advice?

And—do you really keep your pasta and grains in the refrigerator?

It sounds like a number of these things mentioned are not done right vs. wrong but merely differently.

I would not, however, dare to disagree with the Penguin’s brownie claims. :-)

@Jeruba In this case, I’m talking about a week at a time, at most two weeks with most of the items, because they will be used every day if the menu is planned out well. You don’t need to use one whole uncut vegetable for every meal. It’s totally fine to cut up most vegetables ahead of time, as long as you store them properly.

Most people, if they buy fresh produce at all, just let it sit and rot in their fridge, and then complain that they have no time to eat/make healthy meals. My method eliminates that problem.

Most of the people I’ve seen handle CD’s, do it by grabbing the label and track surfaces between their thumb and fingers. As a result, some tracks are so smudged with various food or body products, that they’re unplayable.

I think the best way is to hold the CD by the edge. so that none of one’s French-fried finger fat is touching the playing surface. The only other person I remember seeing hold a CD the way I do, is the magnificent Margaret Cho, on an episode of “Ghost Whisperer”.

I’m a medical transcriptionist, and I spend all day listening to doctors butcher the English language.

They frequently don’t follow the “subject-verb agreement” rule when speaking (they should say “weighing and measuring” instead of “weighing and measures”), almost always forget to say “and” before the last item in a series, and invent their own words when all else fails (“disorderatatively” is NOT a word).

When I see a report that one of my coworkers has typed, I feel physical pain. They type what they hear and they don’t care if it makes sense or not.

Maybe I just need to get a life. Perhaps no one else notices these kinds of inconsistencies.

However, I honestly feel that I am the only one who has the ability to listen to a f*cked up sentence and fix it in my head before I type it. No one else seems to be able to do this “on the fly.” I’m an idiot savant, I suppose.