Is it just me, or do other people have difficulty distinguishing left from right, without having to contemplate it for a moment? It's especially embarrassing if you're a piano teacher, and constantly call out your primary-school aged students for mixing up their right hand and left hand, while you yourself can't navigate a driver to save your life (and you often navigate drivers in a way which endanger both your lives...)
"Turn right at the roundabou- I MEAN LEFT!!"
*cue sharp swerve, the car briefly mounting a traffic island, annoyed horns beeping, and an irritated driver*
To circumnavigate this issue (excuse the pun) I use the terms "first-", "second-" and "third exit" when approaching a roundabout. It's a game I have called "pretending to be a GPS". (Which brings me to a job I briefly considered in my long-lost youth... being the voice of a GPS. This falls under the general umbrella category of 'wanting to be a voice actor', which was the result of discovering enjoyment in acting but realising I didn't have the face for TV).
Recently, in a bid to reduce the number of words uttered during a car trip (as I'm a woman of few words), I've taken to tapping the passenger-seat window to signify left, and waving my hand in the driver's face to signify right. Few drivers are patient enough to tolerate this form of navigation, but my spatial ineptitude is of the magnitude that it should really be considered a disability!
I know that my left hand makes an L shape, and my 'right' hand is the hand I 'write' with (being right-handed), but these don't serve to help my situation at all. I don't want to have to think about distinguishing left from right. I don't have to think about distinguishing up from down, so why can't this cavalier attitude to longitude also apply to latitude?
Although come to think of it, I often have trouble distinguishing male from female... hot from cold (temperature wise, I never seem to wear appropriate clothes)... nice man from molester-of-women... you get the idea. So perhaps I'm just perceptually challenged.
This is quite a dilemma you have... Poor kitty :( Maybe you should change the language? so like your tapping/waving thing.. but new words. Then you have a fresh start and might not get confused :P Especially if you create the words yourself directly associating them with what you percieve as left and right.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the window tapping, I'm particularly fond of that one. Especially when we miss the turn because your window is down and you've been vainly tapping against thin air! No, I quite enjoy your unique brand of navigation, it makes driving a fun and challenging puzzle :P
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