Three random things about me:
1) I am direction dyslexic. Meaning that I can't tell left from right. You would think that I could remember that my right leg is amputated and that that would help me somewhat? Nope. My brain just doesn't process the difference between the two directions. It makes driving challenging. Fortunately John and the kids have learned to find humor in it. (Note: I do tend to have a pretty good sense of direction, as in cardinal directions. I can also read equally well from either direction)
2) I don't care much for ice cream (esp in milkshakes) or ham because of awful throw-up experiences with them. An awful vomit experience with pickles resulted in a fairly temporary aversion. [Note: during my chemo era (when I was throwing up dozens of times each day), I learned that OREO cookies taste just the same going down as coming back up. OREOs became my major food group for about a year.]
3) I like to write my 'to do' list on the side of my left hand, just below the base of my thumb. Right now there are faded words there from this morning reminding me that I needed to put a textbook on reserve in the library.
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C'est moi
I was raised Mormon, but now I'm a hippie Quaker living in the OC with my two teenage kids: CatGirl & GameBoy.
Twenty-six years ago I lost my right leg to bone cancer. Awhile ago I had an antibiotic-resistant infection in my lower left leg, and now I'm healing from surgery and feeling better every day.
I like gardening, making history, outrigger canoeing, trying new things, and my afternoon cup of tea.
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
~Christopher Robin, Pooh's Grand Adventure
Contact: remyjATucidotedu
Twenty-six years ago I lost my right leg to bone cancer. Awhile ago I had an antibiotic-resistant infection in my lower left leg, and now I'm healing from surgery and feeling better every day.
I like gardening, making history, outrigger canoeing, trying new things, and my afternoon cup of tea.
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
~Christopher Robin, Pooh's Grand Adventure
Contact: remyjATucidotedu
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6 comments:
I'm directionally mixed up too. I know perfectly well where I want to go, or where things are positioned. It's just that it takes me longer than it should to process getting the words out. I have to think,"that's the side I wear my watch on" for left, and then I can retrieve the word. This makes me a poor navigator in Britain, since a right turn there feels like a left turn to me, and it just becomes impossible for the correct word come out quickly. My husband's learned that it's probably best to have me drive, and him read the map, rather having me shouting, "Turn left, no right, wait, I meant left". A special ed teacher friend of mine told me this is one thing they screen for, and it's linked with dyslexia, but no reading problems here at all either.
!ykaerf si gniht noitcerid tahT
Are you sure it's your left hand?
Well, I know it's either written on my left or my "other left" hand. :)
Paula:
I like how you've linked the difficulty to language. You're right--I know which way I want to go, I just can't give it the correct word name. Having to say Left or Right under pressure is really tough, or having to interpret someone else's directions is really tough, too. My Driver's License test was just crazy for me because I knew it'd be terribly hard for me to figure out what the examiner wanted me to do without being able to process directions. Somehow I passed the first time, though.
When I travel somewhere new I usually have to allow myself enough time to make a few wrong turns, just because narrrative directions are so hard for me to interpret. I love though, that yahoo maps is starting to print small left & right arrows in the margin next to their directions--for all of us who can't tell the difference!
Oh and I can I just add how freakin' hard it is for me to be given directions in a foreign language and then try to figure out what they mean! Impossible!
I have noticed that I finally can listen to instructions fairly well. That's been a long slow time coming-- although driving in Britain is hard for me to interpret-- I think I have right turn and left turn filed in my brain by whether or not you have to yield to oncoming traffic, not by the direction you have to go. So in Britain you have to yield to oncoming traffic for the right turn, so if someone says left, I'm apt to go right. But even there, I can interpret instructions coming in to me better than I can give instructions to someone else. (My husband goes to England for work a lot, so we've been there together three times now, and always feel very relieved when we turn the car back in.) Back when I was in Driver's Ed, I couldn't handle interpreting right and left directions from the teacher very well-- I imagine I was terrifying to drive with.
I had always thought I was the only person who did this, till my friend told me it was an official sign of a learning disability.
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