Can you tell your left from your right?

Having learnt it as a small child, I have no more difficulty with it than knowing up from down.

I do struggle though to read maps unless they are orientated in the direction I am looking, or to match up photos with plans (eg looking at a floor plan of a house and matching it to a photograph of a room) so I guess I understand the difficulty a bit.

My husband can’t. I find it annoying, especially when he’s driving.

My problem is that I also can't tell the difference between a L and a backwards L. 😂

At the risk of getting a kicking, I think there may be a male/female thing here too.

in my experience a fair proportion of the women in my life struggle with left and right and none of the men do.

Yeah, I know it's not easy to understand what I mean, I've spoken to lots of people about it over the years and they never really understand what it is that I find hard about it.

I get the concept that we remove or add in a phantom hour, I just can't get my head around whether that means we 'lose' or 'gain', and what time it will be in the morning when I wake up. Sorry I can't really explain it better than that - I've given up trying to work out out. It's easier now we have phones that auto-adjust. I just look at my phone and think 'oh it's 7am, fine, I'll get up then'.

Me too

Your left index finger and thumb make a capital L.

Oh oh! Another thing I can do, is I can imagine complicated 3D objects in my head and zoom in and out of them and rotate them. Like Rubik's cubes with the colours or multi-sided objects like prisms and dodecahedrons and what have you.

I never realised other people couldn't always do this!

What is it that you don’t get? In spring the clocks ‘spring’ one hour forward, in fall/autumn, they ‘fall’ one hour back. I don’t think there’s anything to get.

I can’t and I always have to say to myself you write with your right hand that’s the only way I can do it, because if this I struggle with directions and giving them, always had this from being a child and I don’t think there’s any other way I could have fix this now. It’s something I have to think about everytime, it’s like my brain won’t retain it.

In our family it’s perfectly acceptable to be giving directions in the car by saying …

take the next left, shit, I meant the other left .. 🙄

but there’s not a single normie in the family so we may not be typical.

Thanks, yes I've heard that one before but I'm afraid I still don't get it!

Just on the subject of left and right again, I realised years ago (because my husband is very bad at it) that I'm good at map reading and then translating that 2D thing into a 3D thing in my head. I am good at knowing which way to go, even if I can't always actually remember it's called 'Left' or 'right' if that makes sense.

The hit in the times tables where there are lots of 6s, 7s and 8s is genuinely just the hardest part though so I wouldn’t read too much into that. I still have to think by twice at 6 x7 and 7 x 8 and I loved maths.

I don’t want them to move. I want them to keep in a straight line but to know I’m wanting to pass and not suddenly leap to the side which they might do if they don’t know I’m there 😁.

Yes nearly 50 and find this and don’t know left from right. I also get mixed up with the number 11 and 12. I work booking appointments all the time and have to use noon instead. It’s hard to explain.

I have no problem with knowing left and right, however if someone asks me to order things from 'lowest to highest' I do have to take a minute to think this through first.

Both my teen DC are autistic. One has excellent spatial awareness and a fantastic sense of direction. The other doesn't know left from right and couldn't direct you to our house from two minutes down the road.

Catholic here, we never forget.

I know my left hand is the one with my wedding ring on. But I have no instinctive sense of it.

Try “ spring forward, fall back “ , this is the only way I can understand it !

I have the straight lines issue. I have to populate a lot of spreadsheets in my job and I'm always getting the lines mixed up. I have glasses to correct astigmatism so it isn't my eyesight.

Ha ha. Nonsense!

How interesting! I’ve never heard of this before, I just assumed everyone knew !

Another thing I can't do, and I've given up trying, is understanding which way the clocks go back and forward in Spring and Autumn.

I've tried so hard but my brain just can't compute it. Do I get an extra hour in bed or lose one? Does it feel like 8 o'clock when it's really 7? If it says 8 o'clock what was it yesterday at the same time?

Same when I travel, do I put my watch back or forward?

Due to working with international teams I have memorised some facts like: to talk to my colleagues in India I need to call them in my morning, and to talk to New York it's my afternoon.
^God I'm even doubting this now, I just can't do timezones!

I’m ambidextrous so have always struggled. Add to that I then became a dentist, where ambidextrous is a bonus but we also chart everything back to front.

It confuses patients who often describe pain on “my left, your right” but of course we examine the mouth while sat behind them so our left and right is the same. It’s just the chart that is reversed. It’s actually done that way so if you look at the chart it’s the same as if you are looking at the patient from the front. But of course patients self examine in a mirror so it appears in reverse to them.

I learnt very early on in my relationship with DH that hand signals worked best while navigating. And when DS came along he would correct me constantly. Neither of them can understand how I still get mixed up. Interestingly like me they are both ambidextrous, they are right handed but play sports ( cricket, golf) left handed. Both of them bat left handed but bowl right handed. We are an odd family. DS’s DB is left handed but plays sports right handed.