Like Wisdom, But to the LeftA long while back a friend of mine managed to get his hands on an old institutional clock, the kind of ubiquitous analog thing that graced hallways in public schools and libraries and government buildings, up by the ceilings. The thing about these clocks is that they pull their time from the power they run on, sixty cycles per tick. This makes the clocks very simple, but one trick is that its an even chance that, when plugged in, the thing still start turning time to the left or right.
Well, the thing to do (or, at the very least, the thing that was done) is this: make a clock face with the numbers in the wrong places. My friend did this; the twelve and six were in the same places, but everything else walked across the dial to take up opposite position. All that was left was to make sure that, when plugged in, the clock went retrograde. It was a perfectly usable clock, and you could tell time with it with a little practice. It drove us nuts. The problem came years later, when my friend and I were working on some damn thing, and I told him to turn something clockwise, and he no longer knew what that meant.
I have similar problems with left and right.
It was theater that did this to me: in the theater, there are many lefts and right, the main set being stage right and stage left (facing the house) and house left and house right (facing the stage). There are further complications if you are sitting behind the light board or the sound board. All of that was a long time ago, but to this day, unless I think about it, I often get right and left wrong.
In cars this is a problem. Missing a turn around here can have effects from negligible to 30 minute detours over hills and down dales, wending though the topology in an effort to finally arrive at a place which has been teasingly in view the entire time.
In cars, I have been dealing with this by thinking not in terms of left or right, but instead port and starboard (I have friends who are nautically inclined, and I've a little bit of experience messing around in boats). I think this works in part because, for me, port and starboard are concepts of direction under power, which cars generally are.
Some winters, I think putting an anchor on the car isn't such a bad idea, either.
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