secret: my complete lack of survival skills

i wanted to write this post because i always like to pretend that i know shit. but it's just not true, folks.

i would die in the wilderness in less than a week.
i cannot macgyver myself out of anything.
i cannot plan ahead.
my common sense is sketchy at best.
my maths is terrible (and i don't mean calculus, i mean like figuring out how long it will take you to get to a place if you're travelling 270km and driving at an average of 90kmph).
i cannot park, not really.
i can't even drive a manual car properly.
and i don't know things about geography. in fact, there are a lot of things i don't know about, but i pretend i do. people name-drop bands, books, movies, famous people, world events, political movements, philosophers, and so much more besides, i pretend like i've heard of it. i haven't. i'm pretending.

this self-examination really started this afternoon when it became clear to me that i can't, for the life of me, light a fire at my dad's place. what. the. fuck. ? the most perplexing thing to me is that at mum's house, i light the shit out of her fires. i think it's because they're so easy a chicken could light them (and they don't even have opposable thumbs. do they? i also don't know about animals). but no, at dad's house, i fill the room with smoke, and although the old saying goes "where there's smoke, there's fire", it turns out that no, there will be no fires lit here tonight.

i tried the other fireplace, the one i feel more confident that i can work. i couldn't work it. i couldn't make it go.

if there is ever an apocalypse, i am screwed.