One time I called 911 because I was following a drunk driver that had collided with multiple vehicles and kept driving. The operator asked me what direction so I looked at my maps app and it said I was going west so I told them west and they said “Sir that street doesn’t run west.” I was speechless after that.
At one point in my childhood, my dad made the comment, “Women don’t know compass directions.” I took offense to that and made a point to learn them to prove him wrong.
I felt vindicated in high school when he was coming to pick me up from a friend’s house and said, “I’m at the gas station. Do I go left or right?” I told him there were several gas stations on the way, and asked which direction he was facing to figure out which one he was by. He couldn’t tell me and finally hung up on me in a huff.
Coloradans be like “just look at the mountains smh”
What? You don’t have an internal compass that keeps you oriented? For some reason I seem to be a lucky person that just knows which compass direction I’m going no matter where I am. And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented. I had some pain meds after a surgery that did that to me. Flushed them damn things down the toilet after the first 2 I took.
And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented.
I know what you mean, there has been a couple of times in my life where my internal idea of direction has been turned off course and it is a very weird feeling indeed trying to reconcile the direction you internally believe you’re facing against the different direction a map or compass is telling you is actually true.
As a kid I also once spent a weekend in Melbourne feeling somewhat disconcerted due to not being . I’d never been there before and flew in on an overcast day which never ended up letting up until I flew out so never ended up getting my bearings while we were down there (didn’t help that this was before the smartphone era so maps weren’t available at the drop of a hat).
That sounds really nice. I’m sure I could develop the skill, but I have to check the Sun
I’m with you. Short of that one day dead noon Hawaii or the middle of a forest I feel like there are clues to approximate North and South even when I’m discombobulated.
If I learned anything in geography class than that west is on the left
And North is in space
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Left.
Your phone is a compass
I don’t know why, but the phone compass is always so shit.
I think it depends on how you hold it.
That’s what I said
Go west. Life is peaceful there. Go west. Lots of open air.
North is W
West is A
South is S
East is D… unless you hit Q or E and rotated the camera, in which case you’re fucked.
…help… Im fucked.
Just walk up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, then jump and shoot someone.
It worked! I teleported to prison!
Or just ask them which is west and they can point you towards it? Your not a compass needle lol, what is that assumption.
What, doesn’t everyone have a haptic compass belt?
Should’ve just put one motor on each nipple and to direct you if north is left or right.
No but I do have something haptic in the back.
That one’s for chess moves.
Opposite to the east.
I have problems telling right from left. At least I’m the moment, if I take my time I can tell.
But I almost always know my cardinal directions
Do you “write” with your “right” hand? That’s how I remember.
Like I said repeatedly. If I get to think about it I know what side is what. It’s only in the moment when I falter
I only mention it as for the last forty years or so every time that someone has said left or right I’ve twitched my hands to work out which one I hold a pen(cil) with. Takes less than half a second and I don’t need to look at them either. It’s not unique not immediately knowing which is which. Live with it.
If you extend your thumb and first finger, the L shape that is the correct way around is on your left hand.
Yeah I know when I have time to think about it.
It’s just when people say: ‘go left here’ or me throng to indicate direction in a split second that my change of getting it right reduced to 50%. My brain doesn’t grok that left right isn’t absolute but related to orientation.
Just remember that port is a 4 letter word and so is left. So left is port and right is starboard.
Thnx, very helpful.
What helped me as a kid is imagine to write. That’s my left hand and than I know which is which without thinking too consciously (in case you’re right handed, it’s the other way around obviously).
But interesting that you know absolute directions easily. That’s a cultural thing actually. I think Australian Aborigines will say things like “my western foot hurts” because it’s more intuitive for them that way.
If I think for it for s second I know, I’ll think about my dominant hand too (although my dominant feet is on the opposite side so I don’t have a clear dominant side).
Yeah the aboriginal method seems way more intuitive to me, yet it probably won’t replace the left right system anytime soon :p
