It's not a word per se, but I've always had trouble with the simple concept of left and right.

When I was learning my directions, I had a small scab on my right hand. I was given a helpful memory aid: "The hand with the boo-boo is 'right'."

You can guess what happened next: that's right, a small accident that left a scab on my left hand.
To this day, I get them mixed up.

Apex.



http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/9305/tongue6hs.jpg

My best mate from school always had the same difficulty. To this day she glances down to see which hand her rings are on when she's figuring which way to turn:P

over here, they teach the kids that the first finger and thumb on the left hand make an L. Apparently it has yet to occur to them that the kids who have difficulty with left and right are also the ones who can't remember which way an L goes.....

The L works for me. Mys sister uses passenger and driver. Neither of us have any issues with letters.

edit: I also always ask "my left or yours" to give me a sec to check for the L.

Reminds me of a helpful tip for setting the table if you can't remember where the silverware goes.

"Left" and "fork" both have the same number of letters

"Right," "knife," and "spoon" all have the same number of letters.

And that's where they go.

what about the sideplate?

Yeah, well it only works for those basic things. If you are having a state dinner, then it's best to consult a chart.

I've always thought one can overcomplicate nutrition...

actually, I find formal dinners rather fun. Place settings have always been a good way to individualize while still maintaining the air of decorum that goes with a formal meal. Plus... what woman DOESN'T like a chance to dress up??

I'm not much of a dresser-upper...I like to look good, I like to put on nice clothes, but I don't do dressed-up. Not without a fight.

Or you could just remember that they're in alphabetical order.

The way we learned left/right was: if you are a righty, you write with your right hand.

The lefties used left is write.

Another L gimmick is the Less than math symbol, <, looks a bit like an L. Greater than becomes the other one: >.
Now that I think about it, those symbols likely have Official Names but I don't know what they might be.

The alligator eats the bigger number.

I can't believe that this otherwise intelligent group of people is having conversations about their inability to identify left from right. I am at a loss for works.

Where is LJ when you need him to make a snarky comment? :D

Well, that's kind of the point. It's not about intelligence it's about the manner in which our brains process certain types of information. It's also a common trait amongst dyslexics, as is confusion over quarter to and quarter past on a traditional clock face.

You were saying? ;)

So what you are saying is all you guys on this thread with the common confusion are dyslexic? WTF? Is this some kind of convention I have stumbled upon. Dyslexic Fourmites United? :D

That's Dyslexic Fourmites Untied, please.

I truly believe that my lack of sense of direction is a form of dyslexia. I'm not saying it is the conventional dyslexia, but there is something in the way our brain processes certain information.

I don't think any of us are asking for government aid, we are just saying we have to use different methods to arrive at the conclusion. Learning is just that: training your brain to think in a way that circumvents inadequacies in your own personal information processing.

It took me 4 days to figure out where my parking space was and how to get to it. Once I made a turn on a one way street and was going the wrong way, it was a lost cause. I finally just parked in paid parking so I could be on time for work. I don't enjoy getting lost...I just don't process direction.

My book is going to be called No Connection to Direction (thought of this years ago) and is not just about not knowing left from right, but the lifelong struggle for my raison d'etre. ;)

Dyslexia carries with it a range of possible traits and 'symptoms'. Each individual trait is not exclusive to dyslexics, it's the combination of a number of them, or the presence of a couple of specific ones that lead to a diagnosis of dyslexia.

No two brains work exactly alike. Most people have ideosyncracies and oddities in the way their brain processes certain types of information, which if they were to be combined with a few other traits wold be considered a form of dyslexia. I have a serious difficulty with spacial relationships. I have no sense of direction and have great diffulty with certain spacial concepts. I also have difficulty with numbers.

I am neither dyslexic nor unintelligent :P

I have dyscalculia. Tested and proved.
I have trouble with left and right and recognising faces as part of this (although I did not know this was considered as a flag for years, so it's not self-indulgence).

Again, I'm not asking for aid or sympathy, but I do hope my friends will be understanding. Don't just tell me your door number, describe your house. Don't say first right, next left, second right - say right after the pub, left at the house with the white fence etc etc

I make up rhymes and picture references for pin numbers, postcodes and other important things. I get by. I am not stupid and I have better spelling and grammar than anyone I work with.

So :frog:

Also, I cannot arbitrarily tell you which direction (N/S,E/W) I am traveling down a certain road. All I can tell you is that I have figured out how to get around my new town much faster than my eagle-scout husband.

I hate it when he tells me, "go west on Little Patuxant" or some such. Huh? Which friggin' way is "west"?

When I was a little girl living in Colorado, I was told that "west" was the direction the mountains were in. When we moved to Chile, the mountains were suddenly east of our house, but I thought that direction was still called "west" and chalked it up to some southern hemisphere weirdness.

I have my own short comings but I have been blessed with an internal compass and the ability to retrace a route I have traveled only once before, even if it has been a year or more since I traveled it last. As a kid in Oklahoma we learned directions early as the Mid West was mapped out in mile sections, with cardinal directions at points of orientation. But then again it may be genetic, as my father and 2 of 3 brothers can do it but one brother and my sister never could, neither could my mother.

At first I was like: :confused:
And then I: :D
I forgot all about the alligator. (One should never forget alligators, they can pop up in the unexpected places!)

I am pretty good with spatial stuff like packing up a truck with different sized boxes or packing a suitcase or planning the space for a company building (use to do this for a living.) I am also pretty good with faces, but cannot remember names...I repeat names in my head so I remember them, but I still usually forget. One thing that helps is seeing the name visually spelled out in my head. If I can do that, sometimes I remember. If it is a name written on a nametag, I don't have much of a problem.

I can be pretty good with directions, as long as I can see it on a map, first. If I can't see it, visually, though, I am not good at it. Like when someone gives you directions over the phone...I may as well not have directions at all. If I can mapquest it, I am good.

Choco, the mountains to the West have always helped me, too, having lived on the front range for a long time. Now that I live in the middle of the mountains things get all screwed up. In Kansas, I was totally clueless about directions.

My sense of time is really messed up, though. 5 hours can seem like 15 minutes to me. And I might really truly believe I have only been doing something for 15 minutes, until I look at a clock or something. I have a bad short term memory, so that doesn't help.

Words escape me, all the time. This is probably why I am not a very good writer...I don't think of things is terms of audible descriptions...I think of them as what they look like.

I have a diagnosis for you case: Painter. "Artist" also applies to this particular condition. I would have it checked if I were you. ;)

I'm bad at knowing people's names when they're in Halloween costumes. I'll probably go around all night trying to figure out which ones are Case and Mac Tire.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: [calling out to platoon] Left shoulder, hut!
[Pyle accidentally puts his rifle on his right shoulder, then corrects quickly, but not before Hartman sees it. He walks up on him]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Private Pyle, what are you trying to do to my beloved Corps?
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, I don't know, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: You are dumb, Private Pyle, but do you expect me to believe that you don't know left from right?
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, no, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Then you did that on purpose! You wanna be different!
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, no, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: [slaps Pyle hard on the left hand side of his face] What side was that, Private Pyle?
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, left side, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: [shouts] Are you sure, Private Pyle?
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, yes, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: [slaps him hard again, this time on right side of his face, knocking his hat off]
[shouts]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: What side was that, Private Pyle?
Pvt. Pyle: [nearly in tears] Sir, right side, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Don't fuck with me again, Pyle! Pick up your fuckin' cover!
Pvt. Pyle: Sir, yes, sir!

Obligatory.

Haha so much for a short thread!
When I get one of those words and then think of it, I'll post.

By the way, i love reading posts in this forum.
:) I know I don't post much, but I'm here.

Watching... :|

Ablation. For some reason, whenever I NEED to use that word (talking to doctors, whatever), it never comes out. Which is frustrating. Because explaining the procedure takes ten TIMES as long as just using the stupid word.

Ok, now you've gone and spooked LJ. He has a thing about lurkers.

:hide:

Uterine ablatioin? yep. How does it come out, wrong or you just can't say it?

I'll be the one in the bad wig. ;)

I just can't think of the flipping word. It's so frustrating. I mean, every day conversation (well... not that I talk about it every day, but you know what I mean), it's not an issue. I go to an ER and they ask when my last period was and I say "June" and they look at me funny and I go to explain... POOF. Word's gone.

Mommy?

amenorrhoea?

Uterine ablation.

How about the word for using a noun as a verb? There is a technical word for it, and I found it in a dictionary en route to looking up something else, never used it, and have now completely forgotten it.

Gerund

Oh. One of my tutors has a cartoon about gerunds on his wall...

Oh wait, I've just read more closely--a gerund is using a verb as a noun (ending in -ing.) Using a noun as a verb is "verbing," according to Calvin and Hobbes.

a lot of the classical grammatical terminology has been abandoned by linguists now. The way it's looked at is different. The functions of words, what they do within a clause or sentence, what their function does to their form, are defined in a much more intuitive and practical way.

YOINK!

gonna swipe what Dana said for a paper...I WAS gonna use that "Conjunction-Juntion, what's your function?" song, but hers is better.

This question is my job description. Try working for an almost 70 year old attorney.......I spend my days playing charades trying to figure out just which file I need to get so he can call "that lady".....

Welcome to the Cellar, Short Bus! Yeah... I don't do this for a living, but it happens a LOT with the HouseMate... "Hey, wanna grab me that thing?" "What thing?" "You know, the thing I need for this weekend." "Honey, WHAT THING??" -description follows, ten minutes later I know what he's talking about...-

What was that song?
 

About 6 to 8 years ago there was a song used in the soundtrack of a movie about the American Civil War. I never caught the title but I wish I could find it.
The song had some pleasant male-voice singing, some good finger-picking guitar, and had lyrics along the lines of:
Coming home to you
coming home to you
Do you want me back?
should I pass on through?
coming home to you

Etc.

I've tried searching for "coming home to you" without luck. I think the band name had the word "white" in it, maybe white stripes, white monkeys, something like that.

Google has failed me.

Help me, Obi-cellar, you're my only hope.

The song is Never Far Away, by Jack White (of the White Stripes), from the soundtrack of the American Civil War film Cold Mountain (2003).

Thank you NoBoxes!

Choose any prize from the top shelf!

Welcome, Shortie.

What's a one-word description for a classroom-like teaching experience where someone you trust will present lectures and answer your questions on a given topic, without implying that that someone is a "true expert"?

Docent?

scam?

Ouch. :thepain:

The decent docent doesn't doze; He teaches standing on his toes. His student dassn't doze and does, And that's what teaching is and was.
- David McCord (1897-1997)
What Cheer, 1945 - American poet, known especially for his poetry for children.

For some reason, I tend to have a brain fart when trying to remember the word "articulate." Ironic, isn't it?

Does it matter if it's the verb or just the adjective?

Fart?