Serious I don't get how to play sheet music

[Words2_live_bye]

Like back in Highschool i learned the Treble sheet music parts. I could look at it and know what keys are to be pressed on a piano. But never learnt the bass side of things. Anyways, i never could wrap my head around how people can look at sheet music, and just start playing it. Even if it's a song they never heard before or even seen the sheet music of, they can just take a look and start jamming out. It baffles me.
That and even though i could read treble notes, i never understood time signatures or how to play them from the paper. Like what bro? It seemed like alien writing to me. I'm a person who plays by ear. I can hear a piece of music, learn it, then i can play it by ear without sheet music. Or a metronome. I can just sync up the song in my head to my key presses and boom, i'm playing the song. It might not be as perfectly timed as sheet music reading, but i can perform no matter what without it.

My teacher in highschool said he knew someone that was the opposite of me. He said he knew a guy who could play guitar from sheet music, but ONLY from sheet music. He couldn't play from ear at all. I'm thinking he learned guitar by relying fully on the sheet music and a metronome possibly. I learned piano by watching simple tutorials on youtube and by ear of course. Knowing what pitches and keys needed to be played and when it sounded wrong.

IDK if there are any of you who play an instrument. But if you do, do you play by ear or with sheet music?

 

[bigantennaemay1]

I play with sheet music.

 

[Tjaldur]

I was even worse. I had to have the letters written out, EFGABCDEF.

 

[TheDarkEnigma]

It's pretty easy, the vertical spaces and ledges represent the pitch of the notes relative to the clef (G4 for treble or F3 for bass), the higher the pitch the higher the note will be and vice versa. The music notes symbols represents how long it lasts.