My Special Skill

I have one, and so can you!

I read once somewhere that if you do something 10,000 times, you become proficient enough to call yourself an expert. And even if I didn’t read that, I’m going to say that I did anyway because it’s still the basic premise.

I wanted to test this theory, and so I dedicated myself to a certain task, and committed to doing it 10,000 times, in order to see if I would in fact an expert at it.

This was three years ago. And now, after all this time and all this effort, I have scientifically proven the validity of the hypothesis:

I am now an expert at saying the word “crap”.

Many people, I gather, would try to do something physical. Which is a fair thing to do, one supposes. But at the same time, that’s a very obvious choice to make.

In my personal opinion, the better test would be something that you would more easily be able to incorporate into your everyday life.

Like, for instance, the word “crap”.

Now, taking careful record of my usage, and testing out various inflections and intonations was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. In fact, some days it was downright exhausting. But I stuck to it, in the name of science.

And at the end of my 10,000 times, I truly felt like I had it mastered.

I could say ‘crap’ in a way that would make you laugh; I could say it in a way that make you cry. I knew exactly when and where to deploy it for maximum meaning, and maximum effect.

Further, as a reward for my hard work, I have found that my usage of the word “crap” is very much a topic of discussion among both scientists and ordinary citizens alike. I’m not privy to these things, but I can only assume that they’re impressed with the gravity and the elasticity I have managed to evoke from a simple, four letter word.

So in conclusion, I encourage you to take the time in your life to become an expert. It doesn’t have to be on “crap”; it could be on anything from baseball statistics to doing backflips. I know 10,000 times seems like a lot of times, and you may not be able to achieve the glory from your efforts like I have. But in the end it’s worth it, because mastery is it’s own reward.

And that’s no crap!