I have some difficulty and like a lot of others I was made really anxious about this at school. I’m right handed so initially I used tensing the hand I write with as a fix. Then I named my right hand * right hand* and for some reason that made it easier. Like Surrender Dorothy I have a prominent scar on my right hand and I never thought about using that.
I’m left handed, and I always thought my confusion stemmed from that. However, I always know how I am oriented using cardinal directions. Which direction “right” and “left” are change depending on what way you’re facing, but North is always North.
I can figure out left and right, but I have to think about it first. It has never been automatic. In riding horses, where there is a lot to think about, (hands, seat, back, head, what the bloody horse is doing at that exact moment) telling me left leg or right rein was useless, I was much better at responding to inside or outside.
I was all good with North and South until I moved to a city on the other side of the lake. Now the water is north, not south where it has always been and I am totally confused and lost and figuring out east and west requires too much mental gymnastics.
Cross-dominant - I write with my right hand but use my left hand for a lot of other stuff, like mousing ( that way I can mouse with my left hand while writing with my right hand). I always have hesitation with left-right, and Mrs Piper has learned to give directions when I’m driving: “your side” or "my side ". I’ve always assumed the confusion and the cross-dominance are connected.
And don’t get me started on that “rightie-tightie leftie-loosy” nonsense - do you mean the direction the thing turns at it’s top or at it’s bottom? They’re opposites, you know.
Strangely, I have less problem with port and starboard than I do with right and left. As others have said, not a big problem, but in moments of stress, can takes a couple of split seconds. Right handed, but I’ll reach out to hug a friend with either arm.
I have no issue with left and right, but east and west I sometimes need a split second to think about, a problem I don’t seem to have for north and south.
If I’m giving directions, watch my finger. I will point in the correct direction, but say the opposite. If I’m following direction, I have no issues at all.
I voted “no.” When I was seven or so I remember being excited to figure out how east/west on maps corresponds to left & right so I had the latter down solidly by then.
As for other things brought up: I’m left-handed, and my parents say I never crawled; they think I didn’t bother with it since I was up on my feet and had taken my first steps by 10 months.
My first grade teacher got in big trouble for saying this when my parents found out…It seems to me that this would be reinforcing if you had to think about it every time she said it. Maybe you were a less indignant six year old than I had been. 
Neither. The direction refers to the one you turn your hand not the object.
Right - and as you keep turning, your hand and fingers start going around the circle and it’s the same issue.
I’m 32 and sometimes I have to think “the left hand makes the L”.
ETA - also, I’m a librarian and sometimes I have to sing parts of the alphabet in my head.
Seriously? Because I crawled really late and my mom was all freaked out because she’d read all this about how crawling is related to reading. Turns out she needn’t have worried in the slightest.
I wear a watch to remind me of my left. God knows, no one seems to wear a watch any more.
Perhaps, but I don’t remember it very well. I do know that, by the time I learned about the whole L-hand thing, I already had it down and thought it odd that my classmates had to do that. Although I also thought it was really, really neat.
BTW, I was also a bit mean. I would use it to trick kids into thinking the hands were wrong by turning my hand the wrong way. Palm out, your right hand makes an L to someone in front of you.
As if by divine punishment, I still have trouble with that when looking at medical charts–I want them to be like looking in a mirror.
I had more trouble with push/pull than left/right. I still visualise a woman giving birth and being told to ‘PUSH! PUSH!’ when I go through a one-way door…
I don’t have any problem with left and right, but I cannot for the life of me keep east and west straight.
Yeah, I had a friend who tried it with both hands at once and she said: “They both make an L!”
I don’t have much problem with left vs. right, although it takes me half a second if someone yells something like “GANGWAY ON YOUR RIGHT!!!”
I know which is which, the problem I have is with verbalizing it. I don’t seem to be the only one, judging by how often I see someone pointing to their left and saying “there, to the right!” or vice versa. Or by how many times I hear someone tell another adult “your other left :D”.
That would depend on whether you rotate in or out. I rotate out so my L is the right hand.
You have to be more flexable than I am…I can’t think of any object I could keep my hand on long enough while turning for it to go in a circle. After about 180 degrees I take my hand off to reposition it.
I grew up in the 50s, when some teachers STILL wanted to make everyone right-handed. I was a lefty and proud of it and did NOT want to change. My first-grade teacher tried her best to make me a righty, but I deliberately made a hash out of my printing, so she gave up.
However, we were taught that “your right hand is the hand you WRITE with,” so I, along with the two other lefties in class, always had a problem with right and left. To this day when I have to make a right turn, I have to think to myself, “DON’T turn left!”
Recently flubbed it at a Hash House Harriers run here, where we call out “on right” or “on left” to say which way the trail goes. How I didn’t get a down-down I’ll never know.