Well, yeah, maybe. If I remembered how to apply rule. I didn’t know which direction to turn either part. I was holding the pole in my left hand, under my arm, facing the top of the base, and turning the base with my right hand. If I turned the pole, it would be “righty-tighty”. If I was under the base looking up, it would be “right-tighty”. I finally squinted at the threads to figure it out.
It doesn’t help being left-handed living in a right-handed world.
This has become pointless. One last try. When you are approaching your car from the front, the back or either side, and you are the driver, do you know what side to get into? I would hope so. Does not matter if it’s on your left or right.
I think we’re in violent agreement. As I said (and as you apparently agree), shotgun position can be on your right or on your left.
If I ask you to get something out of an American car, and say that it’s on the drivers seat, are you going to ask if it’s on the left side or the right side? Are you going to ask me which way the car is pointed? Are you going to ask how you should approach the car so that you know which side is the drivers side? Do you need to see the steering wheel to tell where the drivers side is (remember, American car)?
No. I never said anything like that, and I am still not saying it. Are you arguing with someone else?
Perhaps we are talking past each other. And that’s enough of the left/right port/starboard for me.
I think you’re right. Sorry about my part in that extended miscommunication. No offense was intended, or taken.
I’m right? No, I’m starboard. 
And likewise.
Growing up in Salt Lake City with its wonderful grid system made it really easy to tell the directions, but apparently, my older sister thought that since the nearby foothills were “up”, then that direction was north, since “up” was to the north. The hill was actually to the east of us. It wasn’t until she became an adult that she realized she was wrong.
I knew a kindergarten teacher who couldn’t handle the switch in right and left when teaching dance to kids. Through kindergarten, children will “mirror” your motions. If you stick out your right hand, they will stick out their left. Sometime between first and second grade they will start to hold out the same hand so if you hold out your right hand, they do as well. This teacher would get confused about which one to use when teaching.
Sure. Generations of Manhattanites know that there are four cardinal directions – east, west, uptown and downtown.
Even though I was born in DC I don’t have to visualize a bicycle to figure out where I’m going. I did know a guy who got so lost there while driving a van to pick up some computer equipment that he paid a cab to drive to the place so he could follow it.
Despite some occasional left/right confusion I’m pretty good on the cardinal directions, although I have been fooled by landmarks occasionally as others mentioned, but generally I can re-orient quickly in the course of a day, I just sense east west from the sun without thinking about it. At night I can easily lose that sense of direction.
I also grew up in Cleveland, and never had this problem. I subsequently lived in several areas in or around NYC, with its rivers, bays, sounds, lakes and ocean. Never confused direction with any body of water.
I’ve been in adult dance classes (not ballroom) led by professional choreographers, and it’s standard for the students to mirror the teacher’s motions. You’d have to mentally turn yourself 180 degrees to match left and right.
Manhattan is a special problem, because Uptown and Downtown are locations as well as directions.
Just like ‘right’, ‘left’, ‘starboard’, and ‘port’.
Different people’s heads work differently.
I’ve never lived, and only occasionally visited, within sight or sound of an ocean. But when I was out on the West Coast for a while, years ago, I discovered that some significant portion of my head thought that “East” and “Towards the nearest ocean” were synonyms; and I found it massively confusing to have the ocean be on my West.
Me from a recent thread that included a bunch of digressions about problems with North-awareness:
This happened to me in SoCal for a while. If I visualized a map everything was in the right place but underneath there was that nagging idea that East is toward the ocean. If someone said something was East of where we were my first thought was that it was closer to the Pacific ocean. Several other Easterners have told me the same thing happened to them.
However, unlike you, I lived the rest of my life no more than 100 miles from the Atlantic. Or maybe that’s no different for you because if sight or sound is your standard.
Anecdote that happened to a co-worker, in the late 90s at the UK arm of a major computer manufacture, which was trying to get into “digital media”, which at the time meant video streaming (very humdrum nowadays but back then was very cutting edge and hi tech)
They hired a supposedly expert in the field to run the European arm of the digital media organization, and lead us into the sunlit uplands of the “digital media economy”, my friend was working for this guy. The company decided to back up this new digital media led approach by actually streaming a video of the quarterly all-hands meeting to all the different geos. This supposed expert in digital media who called my friend over and asked “why can’t I download this video link?” and my friend had to explain to the head of digital media for EMEA, that “no you don’t download the video, its a streaming link, the computer plays the video and downloads it as you go along.”
Needless to say the company’s efforts to be the leader in digital media and video streaming were not successful (not just because of that one guy, but it was pretty symptomatic of the company as a whole.)
I grew up on the West Coast, and it was mountains east, ocean west. Then, I travelled to Hawaii, and it was mountains in the middle and the ocean all around.
I do tend to turn a paper map to match my direction of travel, but I freely admit to a terrible sense of direction. GPS has been a godsend for someone like me.
Back to things that happen at work (smile), one specialty queue I’m on can only be used by callers who meet specific criteria (state issuing their prepaid card, must have active card in their possession). At least half the calls I get transferred to that queue do not meet those criteria, and I am heartily sick of having to explain this to poorly trained “colleagues” who either aren’t thinking about the call or are just trying to get rid of that call to meet metrics. I keep grumbling to a friend near me that we really should be getting a pay boost for training agents from the other contractor serving this client, since said other contractor apparently doesn’t.
Linear time.
I have had some version of the following conversation way, way too many times:
(Setting: Tuesday afternoon)
Me: So first, you need to do task A. then person 2 does task B. Then you do task C together.
Person 1: yes.
Me: and task A takes 6 days.
P1: About, it might take 8.
Me: Any chance it will take less?
P1: No. it needs at least 6 days
Me: P2? You need, 3 days you said?
P2: yes
Me: can you do them at the same time or overlap at all? or get started early? or start early on task C which takes 4 more days?
P1 & P2: absolutely not.
Me: and 4 days for task 3.
P1: yes.
Me: (internally adding 6+4+3) so you’ll be done in about 3 weeks.
P2: Oh, no no no no. Everything will be done by the end of the week.
Me: That is three days from now. You told me that task A took 6 days. That’s not how time works. Pick one. Does A take 6 days? or will you be done with everything in 3? It cannot be both. I don’t care which - but not both.
(end scene)