CARLTON FLETCHER: Making good use of those special ‘talents’

“You could have been anything That you wanted to, And I can tell … The way you do the things you do.”

— The Temptations

The Bible tells us that each of us has been granted certain talents and that we should utilize those talents or lose them. And when you’re dealing with things of a biblical nature, I would be willing to bet that “talents” are very meaningful and useful skills.

But there are lesser-known “talents” that most of us possess that drop far below the level of biblical to more mundane, even comical, categorization. But it’s these special “gifts” that help us to sometimes stand out in a crowd, help us impress perhaps the otherwise hard-to-impress and maybe even win us a few bar bets.

We all know people who can do certain things that, while essentially meaningless, never fail to impress — or in some cases, gross out — a gathering. (Note: It helps if said gathering has been drinking alcoholic beverages.) David Letterman used to have a recurring segment on his late-night show called “Stupid Human Tricks.” These are the things I’m talking about.

To wit:

♦ Before she became a mommy a few days ago, for instance, my daughter Jordan could put her hands on her hips and touch her elbows together in front of her! (Note: Try doing this yourself. Unless you’re extremely double-jointed (triple-jointed?) you just can’t do it. Humans are simply not built to do this. Second note: And Jordan’s not even double-jointed!) The first person who comes up to me and does this, I’ll buy you a Coke … or, if you’re like me and can only remember longingly those lofty days of chugging the world’s greatest soft drink, I’ll buy you a bottled water. Trust me, this is an unbelievable thing to see.

♦ When I was in the sixth grade (when dinosaurs still roamed freely and there were no cellphones!!!) and I spent my one year at Irwin Academy in Mystic, a guy in my class — if I remember correctly … and this was more than 50 years ago! … his name was Eddie Benford — could make a noise with his mouth that sounded exactly like a whistle. Now you might think you couldn’t do a lot with this talent, but Eddie cracked all us guys up and created all kinds of havoc at basketball games. Eddie was on the boys basketball team, but while the girls were playing, he’d sit close to the court and at opportune times make his whistle noise.

We’d sit away from Eddie so no one could figure out who was “blowing a whistle,” and he’d do his thing so nonchalantly, it was impossible to tell he was doing it, even if you were staring straight at him. He’d let lose a whistle, and players on the girls teams would stop and throw the ball to unsuspecting referees, who would look at each other as if to say, “I didn’t blow a whistle, did you?” Invariably, school officials would get on the PA system and demand that “anyone in the stands who has a whistle” stop blowing it. Eddie was a hero!

♦ Another person I know (who will remain anonymous), had a “mouth skill” like Eddie. Only he could make a sound identical to one of those obnoxious car alarms. (The coolest part was that his talent included the little “chirp-chirp” sound that these alarms make when they’re deactivated.) I confess that it was I who put him up to it most frequently, but I’d make deals with him to step out into a hallway and make the alarm sound and then quickly duck back inside a room. I’d stand and LMAO (yeah, I’m hop to Twitter-ese) as all these people came running into the hallway to see who had parked their car inside the building. Big-time laughs.

♦ I also knew a guy — and this was an amazing talent — who had the ability to use that saliva that comes from under your tongue to make the most amazing spit bubbles. Now we all have made spit bubbles as kids that would pop before they left our lips, but this dude made lighter-than-air spit bubbles that would actually float like those bubbles made with those bubble-blowing kits that get all over you and make you feel like you’ve been dipped in oil. Quite an amazing visual.

As for me … well, I think I’ve mentioned here before that I can make that dripping faucet noise that Cameron made in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” — which I’m quite proud of — and I have the capacity to meld slivers of bars of soap so that they aren’t wasted. Neither of those talents holds a candle to clapping elbows or blowing cool spit bubbles, but I guess you have to play to your given strengths.