I have the same problem, and I’m right-handed and not at all ambidextrous. I do, however, hook my fingers over when I write, like left-handed people do. I don’t have a sense of north/south/east/west either.
I usually have this problem. The one place where I don’t have this problem is driving: right turns are the easy ones, left turns cut across traffic.
Yep.
Once I get used to a setting in which directions are used a lot, can figure it out.
Like- I know on the computer, my right hand is the one on the mouse and my left hand is on the keyboard. In dance class, I always can tell left from right immediately. In theatre, once I’m used to a certain theater, I can do the whole stage left/stage right/upstage/downstage without thinking.
But get me in, say, an unfamiliar gymnasium and tell me to cross my right foot over my left. I have to think a minute. Or give me a ride somewhere I’m not used to giving directions for and I’ll give you a lot of- “turn here! turn… umm… this way! um… toward the church… left!”
Thank Og for threads like these! I’ve been embarassed by this my whole life, and now I don’t feel quite so alone.
I like to claim that it’s because my brain is so stuffed with knowledge that some of the trivial stuff like “left” and “right” had to be pushed out to make room.
Sometimes I’m okay with left and right, other times I get crossed up. Another odd twist on this: I have less problem with “port” and “starboard” than I do with left and right.
I’d never heard the one about making an “L” for Left. Good one. I’ll probably use it in the future. If I remember. If I can figure how to do it discretely.
Do you also have trouble with math? If so, you may be dyscalculic like me.
I’m an intelligent woman. I graduated from university with honours. One thing that always foiled me, however, was arithmetic. And directions. And left vs right. And remembering things in a sequence, like choreography. And reading analog watches/clocks.
When I was a kid, I would write my numbers backwards. I kept doing so until I was about 8, maybe older. I was reading grade 10 books in the 4th grade, but I couldn’t read analog clocks until I was maybe 13 or so. And to this day, I often add and subtract any numbers with two or more digits with my fingers.
This caused a great deal of embarrassment and frustration throughout my school years. I loved biology and science but couldn’t pursue it due to my inability to work with numbers. My math teachers thought I was just lazy or disinterested. The truth was… I couldn’t comprehend even the most basic step of most equations. I would try and try, but the numbers and symbols may as well have been a martian language. They did not make sense.
All this time, I thought I was just half an idiot. Well, I still am, but now I know the name for it. Dyscalculia.
Anyone else see themselves in this?
I have this problem, and considering that occasionally I teach people how to drive fast on the race track, it can sometimes be a little, shall we say, embarrassing. :eek:
Oh my sweet Og I knew I loved you people. I feel like I’m on an infomercial or something; I had absolutely no idea other people had this issue. I have had this problem my entire life. Mr. Armadillo and I have had fights ending in me bursting into tears over my inability to retrieve “turn right” from my brain at the crucial second. I always end up frantically waving my right arm and saying “that way!” which is, granted, both annoying and potentially dangerous. He would yell at me for it and now if we’re going somewhere and I’m navigating with him driving, I’ll plot the "right"s and "left"s miles ahead of time and keep repeating it to myself until we get there.
I’m right handed. My trick was to “air write” a-b-c, which, over the years, has devolved from cursive a-b-c into just a squiggle, or flicking my fingertips.
Count me in. I’m also thrilled that yanceylebeef pointed out that “L” thing, and am now fascinated by it. I will be sure to try it out next time it happens.
I was born left-handed, but my father switched me over to doing things right-handed at an early age, thinking he was preparing me for a “right-handed world”, and I admit to a vague suspicion that that had been the reason I was so messed up about it. I see now that I am likely mistaken.
Oddly enough, I never thought much of my being *dyslexic and having ADD * as contributing much to the problem, though now that I think about it, is probably more of a factor than not. :smack:
Lefty here, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard, “No, your other RIGHT!”
When I was in basic training in the Air Force, the TI made me carry a rock in my right hand. It didn’t do that much good. I’d still end up playing chicken with someone on either side of me.
hajario, my freckle is on my right wrist, wait, let me double check…
I was in marching band.
I never had this problem.
Then I moved to Australia and started driving on the other side of the road.
Now, for whatever reason, my brain has switched my left and my right. Its seems, after 20 years of driving, that Left/Right has been associated with Left Turn/Right Turn, with left turns going over the opposite lane and right turns not doing that.
Then I moved here, and left turns do NOT cross the opposite lane. I became confused. I could no longer reliably tell my left from my right, when I had been able to do so all my life. I know it has to do with retraining myself to drive on the other side of the road, because I lived here two years not having a car and I could tell my left from my right still, no problem. Within a week after I started to drive*, I could no longer tell my left from my right, my brain had firmly switched directions and associated the words with their opposites. I remain sort of weirdly fascinated by the process.
Now I have to do the “finger L” trick and look at my wedding ring.
sigh
Cheers,
G
*Don’t even get me started on how ridiculously easy it was to get a drivers licence here. Dangerously easy, for someone used to being on the other side of the road!
I’ve exactly the same problem. And I’m right handed. I’ve to briefly think about the hand I use to write, and then only I can determine where is the right and where is the left. When I was a kid, I actually moved the hand as if I were writing. On a regular basis, when asked for directions, I point to the correct one, but call it otherwise, because I didn’t take the time to identify it correctly.
I can tell my left hand from my right hand.
My right hand’s the one with the wart on the inside of the thumb. But still, when pressed and in urgent need to specify a direction, I will flap whichever hand is relevant and shout “That way! No, that! Way!”
It makes getting taxi rides home fun sometimes. It’s only because there’s a pattern to the roads that I can do it without incident.
I, too, suffer from this affliction. I’m right-handed, and use the mental thought “write with my right hand” rather than forming an L with my other hand to remember the two.
You are not alone. I have a friend who revealed to me that she has this problem. A little while later I was talking to a taxi driver and mentioned it and he said that it is VERY common. He told me lots of stories about people trying to direct him to places and not being able to get the turns right. He said he had twice had passengers grab the wheel to turn the opposite way after he began to follow their directions. He said that routinely passengers would be angry that he had turned the “wrong” way.
As for how my friend deals with the problem: she puts her hands down in front of her, on a table or on her thighs and looks down - the one that looks like an L is left.
In kindergarten, my teacher happily started the class off with “The hand you write with is your right hand.”
As the only lefty in the class, I’ve been screwed up ever since. I notice that I always instinctively know left. Left? Left is this way. Right? Right is the same way as left until somebody yells at me that I’m going the wrong way.
I was thrilled when I joined the marching band in high school and discovered that you were supposed to start on the left foot. Dance classes as a kid were mortifying. Everybody did a pretty little spin to the right, and I crashed into the girl next to me.
Unfortunately, my roommate thinks the best method for making sure I go the correct way when driving is by pointing. No matter how many times I tell her that I’m looking at the road and therefore cannot see where she’s pointing, she still does it. We’ve managed to work out that “this way” means “right”, “passenger side”, or “blinker up”. “That way” means the way I naturally want to go anyway.
Wow.
I’ve never even heard of this before (I’m left handed too). Left is the COOL side and right is for those weird people… 
One thing I do remember though is the day left and right were explained to me as a small child. I thought of them as compass points, and couldn’t fathom how my left hand could still be my left hand if I turned around 180 degrees.
Working in the automotive industry I learned long ago that using driver / passenger side always works.( USA ) . Now when a nurse or anybody asks right or left I respond passenger or driver . Kind of dopey , but , whatever works .
Well it looks like this thread has completed its course. I can’t imagine anyone with our condition not posting to it.
I’d like to thank all the posters who have responded to this thread. It has been somewhat comforting to me to know that I’m not alone. There is no need now to start a support group in my community
That “L” trick is v ery interesting. I’ve never heard of it before. It’s like the right hand screw rule that I used by extending my thumb of my right hand to tell me the penetrative direction of a normal right hand screw turning in the direction of my right hand fingers.
Gleena, I so understand. I spent 4 months in England way back and caused an accident as a result of the confusion of left and right. (No one was hurt but I was convicted of driving without due care and attention. 15 quid fine)
I’m sure we’ll all carry on as before, but at least we know that we aren’t alone or stupid.
ME TOO!
I was at a COMPLETE loss for years until someone taught me the “L” with your fingers trick. I stil do that every time but now I just push my hands against my legs rather than look at them, makes it a little less noticeable.
I also had a VERY hard time learning to read analog clocks, Carlyjay’s link is very interesting.
Anastaseon, I am ADD also, but not dyslexic.
Here’s just a very weird thought:
How many of you with this problem consider yourselves to be excellent spellers?