Directional Disabilities
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We watched a Netflix series called Feel Good. I suppose that the series title must be taken ironically, because throughout the first two seasons, not one character seemed to feel even slightly positive or healthy. Just about everyone was miserable — their unhappiness usually linked to romantic or more specifically sexual dissatisfaction. The program introduced…
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Hackett Hill Road is two twisty, depopulated, uphill-and-down miles long. It is unpaved and seriously washboarded. If you didn't know for sure that it was a public thoroughfare, you might think that you had accidentally turned into someone's long driveway. Most of our guests arrive from the South Road side of things, which is an…
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The New York Times says that former employees of Wells Fargo admit that they "systematically singled out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages." "These loans," Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, "tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city…
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In Pickwick Papers, Pickwick checks into the Great White Horse Inn in Ipswich, is shown to his room by a chamber-maid only to discover that he's left his watch downstairs. He retrieves it but then cannot find his way back to his room. He's utterly, hopelessly lost. "Rows of doors… branched off in every possible direction. A dozen times…
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One of the awkwardnesses that we dysgeographicoids, or directional dyslexics (or whatever you want to call us) have to come to grips with is — being asked for directions. You might just be walking down a street, more or less aware of where you are, and a car pulls up next to you and a lady…
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The word "ligaw" in Pilipino, a language of which I am totally ignorant, apparently means both "totally lost" and "courtship." And therefore the adjective "ligawin" refers to someone who is both "directionally disabled" or "directionally dyslexic" and also "attractive to persons of the opposite sex." What a wonderful correspondence, especially to those of us who…
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As far as I know, there have been exactly zero scientific studies of directional dyslexia. As a consequence, all of our knowledge is anecdotal. No one can say for certain whether the condition is inherited or acquired, or whether it’s more (or less) common among women, southpaws, redheads, eastern Europeans, bad spellers, or chocoholics. "Common…
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This post is written for members of the directionally dyslexic community. Non-members are welcome to read but they probably won’t get it. Some cities are easy to navigate; others are nightmares. In the small western city where I live, the mountains are always visible, and they’re always, blessedly, to the west. In addition, the streets…
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Aficionados of this blague know that I'm directionally disabled. I don't think that I've admitted that I suffer from frequent nightmares in which I'm totally lost in a strange city or building. Last night I experienced another such dysgeographical dream. I was trying to walk north in some unidentifiable but mysterious city. A large building,…