Dr. Metablog

Cishet

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 many more eccentric varieties of coupling and frustration than I, a vanilla heterosexual, would have imagined. The main character, Mae Martin, played by Mae Martin, is a boyish lesbian; her on-again, off again affair with a womanly young lady is the focus of the story. Lots of obstacles both personal and social stand between the two women and the achievement of genuine happiness. Let's hope that they can figure it all out and find love at long last -- or at least by the end of Season 3. 

There was one scene that I found to be particularly curious and troublesome. A group of teachers assemble for a meeting, but before taking up business, every one of the participants reveals or defines his or her own sexuality. One young woman, surely the least glamorous of the set, refers to herself as "cishet." I didn't catch the word as spoken but fortunately we had the subtitles engaged and I was able to read the word, although in reading I pronounced it to myself as if the sh were a digraph for the lingual palatal fricative as in shut or shun. But I investigated the new word "cishet" -- and sure enough it exists and has become a feature of our contemporary culture. It's "cis" as opposed to "trans" which means not "across" but "this side" -- as the Romans referred to Gaul as either cisalpine and transalpine. In this coinage, "cis" refer to a person who accepts the gender designation assigned at birth by the appearance of one's genitals. "Het" is simply a truncation of heterosexual." "Cishet" therefore means someone who is unambiguously either male or female and is attracted to persons of the opposite sex.

Wow, that's me. After all these years of just thinking I was an ordinary guy, I now discover that I have a designation. I have a community, at tribe, perhaps even an interest group. Hey, I belong,

But I think that it's mighty odd and even oppressive that members of a school community, or any community, would feel that it is necessary or advisable to announce their gender classification before getting down to the business of the day. Shouldn't such information be allowed to remain private. If I want to be cishet, it's nobody's business but my own. But perhaps such formal revelations don't happen in real life -- only in satirical TV series. I sure hope so. 

Not so for Mae Martin, the first paragraph of whose biography reads "Mae Martin is a Canadian-born comedian, actor, and writer based in England. They wrote and starred in the Netflix comedy series Feel Good." So it appears that "she" is a "they" which in current modish jargon doesn't mean that she's plural but signifies that she feels inadequately represented by the simple and specific feminine pronoun. I can understand her motive, but frankly "they" confuses me and sticks in my ear. I appreciate its value as a statement of resistance to the "hetoro-normative" -- but by golly "they" sure throws a spanner into the grammatico-normative works. It would be good if English had a set of singular pronouns that are as gender indistinct as "they," but it doesn't, and to hijack the plural "they" and turn it into a singular is an awkward and I hope ephemeral innovation.  

Sometimes I receive communications from people who are much more up to date than dear old dad -- letters that are signed in the traditional way but to which is subjoined, "My pronouns -- "he his," or "she her hers" (or "they them their"). This habit, I suppose, clears the air and perhaps forestalls some embarrassing or awkward moments, but again, seems unnecessarily revelatory. It's limiting and partial. It seems to me to declare that such guys and gals were acting in the parochial interest of their own tribe or constituency -- much as if everyone appended to his or her name his own religion or nationality. I'm not happy with this innovation. Although it might seem progressive, it is in my opinion ultimately dangerously reactionary.

Therefore I am not so current that I would include my pronouns on any letters that I write. But I would like to append my adjectives,

Yours very sincerely,

Vivian de St. Vrain

(My adjectives:  "wise, upstanding, formerly debonair.")

"Barefoot to Palestine"

I'm enchanted by a sentence in Othello that is spoken by Desdemona's lady-in-waiting, Emilia. She's helping Desdemona to undress and the two women are engaged in informal chat. Desdemona, perhaps wondering why she had the misfortune to fall in love with exotic Othello, allows her mind to wander. It comes to rest on a countryman of hers, a good-looking man named Ludovico. And then her interlocutor Emilia praises handsome Ludovico in words that should compel every sentient being to gasp in astonishment and admiration.

About Ludovico, Emilia makes a remarkable claim: "I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip."

All that needs to be said is, wow! But let me try to explain why the sentence so transfixes me.  

It's hyperbole, but not the ordinary hyperbole of largest or smallest or coolest or most awesome. It's a hyperbole beyond hyperbole. A lesser writer might have said, "I know a lady who would have walked a long way to make love to him." Not Shakespeare. For "a long way," Shakespeare give us "barefoot to Palestine"; for "make love" he offers "a touch of his nether lip." It's extravagant and wheeling.

A hike, shod, to the holy land, would have been a long and exacting journey. Barefoot, beyond belief. The evocative word "Palestine" infuses religion and sanctity into a sentence about sex and desire -- and therefore generates a love-longing that is as powerful, as silly, and as ill-planned as a crusade. And for what aim? Not even, for this mythical lady hiker, a big, zonking, mouth-filling kiss; simply for the merest contact of lips. No, not even lips, just one lip -- the lower one. It's an hyperbole of minimalism.

In the poetry that Shakespeare knew from his childhood, it was men who would make the vows and undergo the trials to court their beautiful ladies. But this lovely sentence reverses the convention. It is, so to speak, Sadie Hawkins day in Venice. 

Emilia elsewhere asserts that women have desires as strong as lovers of the other sex; here she demonstrates that women's love-longing can be as ridiculous (and as powerful) as men's. 

And everyone who knows Othello will hear in the word "Palestine" an intimation of the violent act that once, many years ago, shook Aleppo.

Another GPS Tale

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 easier passage. We're just .2 from South Roadm a much easier ride than the long route, off of Route 25. The GPS, which most people use nowadays, takes people the long way.   

Directly adjacent to the graveyard, which is the only obvious remnant of the old community of West Bradford, lies our narrow driveway. It's inconspicuous and steep, but we've posted a wooden sign with our street number. The number is an innovation;  we didn't have one until 9/11 -- nor did we need one, because there's no mail delivery on Hackett Hill. (We go to town to pick up mail; Muriel at the post office takes good care of our occasional packages and flyers and medical bills.)  

Some friends, new to rural Vermont, traveling from Denver with their two teenage daughters, came to visit us the other day. They were a bit intimidated and possibly a little anxious as a consequence of their slow passage along Hackett Hill Road. Although they were carefully following Sheila, which is what they've named their GPS (ours is Dorcas) they missed our sign and overshot their mark. Sheila, the idiot-savant, nevertheless announced, "You have arrived at your destination, on left." On the left, of course, was only the cemetery with its lichen-encrusted marble gravestones. They were surprised and amused --their vehicle, I'm told, filled with hilarity -- but were poised enough to continue to the end of the road, make a U, and initiate a most pleasant visit.  

Why We Hate Wells Fargo

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 services."  Why did the bank act with such malice?  Because Wells Fargo "saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Wells Fargo employees picturesquely identified these transactions as "ghetto loans" made to “mud people.” 

The city of Baltimore has filed a suit against Wells Fargo.  "The toll taken by such policies, Baltimore officials argue, "is terrible. Data released by the city as part of the suit show that more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods."

It's called reverse redlining -- systematically marketing the most expensive and onerous loans to black customers.  

So here's the deal.  The city of Baltimore loses, the neighborhoods lose, individual families are financially crippled for a lifetime, and the CEO of Wells Fargo gets a 50% raise to $21,000,000 a year. What a deal! 

What's going to happen to the suit?  It was filed in January, 2008.  Three years later, after a predictable spate of legal wrangling, a federal judge has allowed the suit to go forward, but not before Wells Fargo "succeeded in limiting the pretrial discovery the city has been able to get and in limiting the allegations and damages the city could claim if the case makes it to trial." A bank spokeswoman said Wells Fargo will “continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Here's what's going to happen. The bank, which has far greater resources that the city,  will assign a couple of hundred lawyers to the case and wear down Baltimore with various hair-splitting motions.  Judges will retire and/or die. The case will be in the courts for an unknown number of Jarndyce and Jarndyce units of time. After a generation or so, when most of the aggrieved will have long since left the earth, Wells Fargo will settle for a slap on the wrist and pay a nominal fine, but admit to no guilt. The bank will trumpet its vindication. Justice will not be served.  It will be bought. 

Can we possibly imagine what will have happened to the many thousandes of no-longer-occupied houses and to their one time oh-so hopeful purchasers?  Nothing good, trust me. 

Every Directional Dyslexic's Worst Nightmare

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 did he softly turn the handle of some bed-room door which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within of "Who the devil's that" caused him to steal away....  He was reduced to the verge of despair when an open door attracted his attention.  He peeped in.... There were the two beds, whose situation he perfectly remembered."  Pickwick steps inside and has removed his clothes when another person enters the room.  He conceals himself.  Bad turns to worse.  "Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and dismay.  Standing before the dressing-glass was a middle-aged woman in yellow curl-papers, busily engaged in brushing her hair....    'I never met with anything so awful as this,' thought Mr. Pickwick, 'what a dreadful thing.'  Uncertain how to proceed, Pickwick 'ha-hums.'  "Gracious Heaven!" said the middle-aged lady, "what's that?"  "It's -- it's -- only a gentleman, ma'am."  "A gentleman!" said the lady, with a terrific scream.  "It's all over!" thought Mr. Pickwick." 

The expected complications ensue.  At last, Pickwick flees, carrying his clothes and dropping his shoes.  But the nightmare continues because he still can't locate his assigned chamber.  Fortunately, he runs into his servant, Mr. Samuel Weller, who escorts him back home.

Clearly, Mr. Pickwick is directionally disabled.

Am I the only directionally-challenged person for whom Pickwick's story is a horrible fear.  I've had repeated nightmares of exactly this complexion.  In fact, I've dreamed this very dream dozens, perhaps scores of times.  I check into a hotel, go for a walk in a strange city and then, for some reason, the elevator doesn't go to my floor, or the staircase comes to a sudden end, or the room numbers go from 401 to 405 when I know that my room is 403.  I wander endlessly until I wake up in a sweat, heart pounding.

And now I have to admit that I once narrowly dodged this embarrassment.  In real life.  I was staying at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in the west of Ireland.  There was no private bathroom -- the facilities were down the hall and a half a flight downstairs.  In the middle of the night, after obeying a call of nature, attempting to return to my room, I stepped into a room that was not mine.  I was just about to get into bed with a strange party when I realized my predicament.  Fortunately, I was able to escape without waking anyone.  I found my own room (good thing there were only two to a floor) but I was in quite a state for an hour or so.   

As I'm writing this, I'm guessing that most of my readers will harrumph their feelings of superiority.  "Couldn't happen to me." My directionally dyslexic friends, however, will understand.  And they will also know why I sympathize and empathize with poor Pickwick.  

Still Another Directional Dyslexic Anxiety

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 leans out of the window and asks, how do you get to, let's say, the football stadium. I don't know about you, but I immediately break into a sweat. Especially if it's a place that I've been to a hundred times and ought to know like the back of my hand. The best way to deal with the tension and anxiety generated by such questions is to pretend complete ignorance: "I'm sorry, I'd like to help you, but I'm a visitor here." Sure, it's an itsy-bitsy lie, but a useful one, because the lady in the automobile is going to get much better instructions from the next person she asks, who will probably be completely normal, direction-wise. 

I remember a particularly tragic instance of direction-giving-panic from my time in England. I used to walk, once a week, from Charing Cross Station to the British Museum. The streets were all a-tangle -- not a one of them parallel or perpendicular. I carried a detailed map but nevertheless, week after week, I managed to lose myself in the maze. I would have thought that I appeared to be totally bewildered, but nevertheless, I was several times accosted by tourists and asked the way to some monument or tube station. Of course I didn't have the least clue. 

Yesterday, walking to the library, a lady in an automobile asked me the directions to Whole Foods. I  tried not to panic but I could feel the clammy hand around my heart. "Which Whole Foods," I asked, stalling. "Nearest one." Well, I've been there a hundred times, so I made an effort. Plus I knew it was only two right turns. "A few blocks this way," I said, pointing, and then turn right until 30th Street. Big shopping center on the left."  So the car drove off and I spent the next ten minutes wondering whether I had given the right directions. Is it after or before 30th Street? Is there an easier way? Is the other Whole Foods closer than the one to which I sent her? What would a directionally-gifted person have said?   

But at least I hadn't sent her in the absolute wrong direction. I think.  

More on directional dyslexia here, here, here, here, and here.

Ligawinitude

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 regularly lose the car in the parking lot and to whom a walk in a strange city is a fearful and daring adventure.  My lexicography is contributed by a Manila reader whose forthright and thoughtful blog can be accessed at this address.)  "Directionally dyslexic" is an ugly phrase, filled with self-loathing; "ligawinitude" trips off the tongue. Well, almost trips;  it's certainly superior to "ligawinness" -- which sounds like the female of an extinct predator.

Here are some examples of ligawinitude (fellow sufferers will empathize) which I have borrowed from Ana in Manila:

"I am so ligawin I still lose my way around the UP campus after 30 years working there. I am so ligawin I'd enter the main door of an unfamiliar office, transact my business, and then try to let myself out through the door of a conference room right smack at a dozen people all gaping at me. I am so ligawin that when I eat out, I can get lost going back from the comfort room to my table at a big restaurant till my friends are about ready to page me....  When I am in a strange place and I wish to explore it, I walk a straight path. When I reach a fork, I turn back."

Ana claims to be "the most ligawin person in the world."  t's a hard claim to substantiate. The instances of ligawinitude that she cites -- well, I can match them with one hand tied behind my back. We won't crown a world ligawin champion until we tabulate the results of the International Ligawinitude Olympics. Nevertheless, it is curious to me that the ligawinitudinous often boast of the severity of their condition.  No one says -- "Oh, I am the most colorblind person in the world," but we (the ligawinoids) take a perverse pride in topping our lost friends. "Loster than thou" is our odd claim.  

Because the general public and even our closest friends treat us as comic, we respond by boasting of our affliction. In effect, we identify with those who laugh at us. 

The chronically lost require liberation. We're not clowns;  we're just subject to ligawinitude. 

Which means that we're a) lost and b) sexy.  

Left-right Confusion

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 sense" suggests that it might be associated with right-left confusion, and indeed, a number of the individuals who've commented on ""People who Lose their Way" indicate that they have severe problems telling the one hand from the other.  For example:  one commentator reports that a lifelong problem is that "I've been completely unable to instinctively tell left from right."  The emphasis on the word "instinctively" is meaningful.  Without conscious effort, most unaffected people intuitively and easily understand the difference between right and left;  for another class, some of them DDers, it's something that must be learned by effort, as in the case of the reader who thinks her DD is related to the fact that she "had lots of trouble as a child learning right and left," or of another who, learning to dance, can't consistently raise "right hand and left leg -- or vice versa."  Another non-instinctive person "still doesn't know my left from my right (I have to put my hands out and see which one makes an 'L).'"  A high school student plaintively confesses that her mom "threatened to write the words left and right on the back of my hands before I had to take the test for my driver's license."  It's a frequent complaint:  "I was almost 20 years old before I stopped having to think 'I write with my left hand...  if I were to pick up a pencil which hand would I hold it in.'"

Is there, then, an association between right-left confusion and directional dyslexia?

I don't think that the evidence allows us to conclude so.

Most of the people who commented do not mention any such condition.

Perhaps they take it for granted that everyone in the DD community shares the trait -- but we don't.  Even though I'm among the world's most frequently lost souls, I have not the slightest bit of trouble with left and right.  In fact, I'd say that I'm hyperconscious of my handedness as well as the handedness of others.  I always observe and remember which of my acquaintances are right or left-handed.  And if someone says, "turn left," I turn left.  Unerringly and instinctively.   

Pending further investigation, the evidence suggests that left-right confusion is independent of directional dyslexia.  It's a separate problem (and one which may further disorient those of us who are chronically lost).

Coming soon:  east/west/north/south. 

Confessions of a Dysgeographicoid

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 that run north-to-south are consecutively numbered.  I'm thankful that I live in a city where it is difficult to lose your way.  Manhattan, where I spent last month, is pretty good too, except for the confusing lower downtown.  Manhattan is on a grid.  Ninety-fourth Street Street is always north of 93rd and 2nd Avenue is always east of 3rd Avenue. The worst that can happen is that you walk one short block in the wrong direction and then right yourself. But other cities are impossible.  Take Washington D.C., for example.  Washington could only have been laid out by a sadist whose aim was to drive the directionally-disabled off their collective rockers.  It's those damn diagonals, which cut through the grid at every conceivable angle.  A few steps along one of those diagonals and the points of the compass become hopelessly shuffled.  And then Washington throws in a few wayward, wandering streets that were added just to cause pain. 

When we visit Washington, we stay at a home on Nevada Avenue that's a half-hour walk from the Friendship Heights Metro.  I've memorized the route (I'm good at rote learning).  But last month, we (that is myself and my spouse -- actually "guide" is the better term) -- set out on a different path from station to home.  Why did we do so?  I don't know;  it wasn't my decision.  A minute hadn't elapsed before I had lost my bearings and had no idea whether we were heading north south east or west or how our improvised path stood in relation to the route that I had mechanically mastered.  My guide, who is not directionally-disabled, sometimes forgets, even after all these years, that a few steps on the oblique and I'm completely buffaloed. 

This time, I decided that instead of whining "where are we?" at every street corner, I would just keep my mouth shut.  I pretended confidence, though I hung back at every corner so as not to commit to a ludicrously wrong direction.  I played follow the leader.  Sometimes we were on the grid, sometimes we took diagonals, sometimes we took one of those eccentric curving streets.  My DD compeers understand that at each of the thirty or so corners that we approached, I had not an inkling whether my guide would choose left, or right, or straight ahead.  But I was, let me tell you, oh so cool.  After a while, the terrain began to grow familiar, but just between us, let me confess that it wasn't until we were thirty feet from our target that I knew where I was.

So, friends, here's my new formula:  keep quiet, hang back, avoid humiliation. 

A Exceedingly Weird Dream

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, which seemed to me to be a junior high school, blocked my path. I decided to cut through the building and continue on my way. I traversed various confusing corridors and staircases until I was satisfied that I was about to exit the correct door (one of many). But I couldn't get out because there were wires (which looked like electric fencing for animals) strung across the doorway. I attempted door after door and each one was wired -- chicken wire, barbed wire, all sorts of stuff. I started to panic, as I often do in such dreams. 

At last I decided to force my way through one of the doors. I tangled myself in various wires which had somehow metamorphosed into thick chains. The chains rattled loudly and I said to myself that someone would hear them  --  it was as though I was back in school and had gotten myself into deep trouble with the principal. And sure enough, along came a guy who seemed to be either a janitor or a detective. He was speaking rapid Spanish and I couldn't understand him. Although I begged him, he would not untangle me. I cried out, "I'm  tired of this basura (basura is the word for garbage in Spanish, which happens to be a language I've never studied and don't know). I shouted, "With basura, with basura."  And then I thought, wow, the phrase "with basura" could be used as the basis of a parody of Ezra Pound's Canto XLV, "With Usura:" ("With usura hath no man a house of good stone/ each block cut smooth and well fitting/ that delight might cover their face" etc. etc.)   A person could substitute the word "basura" for the similar sounding "usura" and make good fun of Uncle Ez's economic theories -- theories which are in fact nothing more than a great big load of reactionary pseudo-medieval poppy-and-lily trash. Inspired, I decided to wake up and get to work on the poem, but I wasn't alert more than a few seconds before I came to the realization that the great world is probably not exactly aching for a parody of Pound's Canto XLV.  Even an exceedinglyl clever parody.

Good News for the Directionally Impaired

I've been indoctrinated by our uncomprehending society to regard my geographical dyslexia, or my directional disability, or whatever it's to be called, as a shameful condition. So it's good to know that DD can be otherwise valued.

I've been informed by one of my readers that the Pilipino word ligaw has two meanings: a) courtship, and b) totally lost. As a result, the adjective ligawan can refer either to a person who has no sense of direction, or to someone who is especially attractive to suitors. It stands to reason that a person who has absolutely no awareness of direction (right or left, east or west) whatsoever and is constantly buffaloed and flabbergasted by the well-meaning instructions of friends and would-be guides must be extremely radiant, perhaps even charismatically magnetic.   

I find this new information to be both highly probable and extremely consoling. 

Moreover, my admiration for Pilipino language and culture and good sense has skyrocketed. 

I therefore propose that the term "geographical dyslexia" be replaced by "ligawan." 

From this moment on, there's a new order to the universe: to be hopelessly dysgeographical, hopelessly lost is now, officially, sexy. 

Travels with Dorcas

We've named our GPS navigatrix,  who gives instruction with a schoolmarmish London accent, Dorcas (which is, along with Prunella, one of my very favorite English given -- or as they call them,"Christian"-- names).  Dorcas has proved to be, on the whole, a reliable friend. She had a little trouble in Cincinnati, where, it turns out, there are two entirely distinct 225 Hill Terrace addresses. She took us to the wrong one -- but I confess that in this case the error can fairly be traced to information-inputter, Dr. M. himself.

Dorcas also had a royal hissy fit when we had to detour onto a single-lane-on-the-other-side-of the-road somewhere in Ohio -- she "recalculated" twenty or thirty times, until I had to temporarily stop her mouth.   It could only be my imagination, but I thought I detected a trace of exasperation in her tone of voice. 

Despite these failings, the Dorcster is a dream at finding her way around unfamiliar towns. No longer will I have to stop at gas stations for incomprehensible advice about how to get back on the highway.  I just call on Dorcas and I've got a friend, oh yeah, I've got a friend.   

A Mental Prosthesis

Regular readers of this blague will remember that Dr. M. has long ago confessed that he suffers from a serious case of "directional disability," or as some call it, "geographical dyslexia" -- which means that he regularly loses his way, is subject to travel-based panic attacks, and is consequently abused by friends and family who refuse to recognize that he's not stupid, just utterly lost. 

Advanced technology rides to my rescue. I now own a mobile navigator. It affixes to the windshield of the car, and, using signals bounced off three or four satellites, instructs me how to get from point A to point B. I've fallen profoundly in love with the disembodied female British voice who doesn't criticize me when I make a wrong turn: she just says, very politely, "recalculating."  Then she says, "drive point five miles and turn left."  What a boon to the chronically lost! I now drive as accurately as a migrating bird. My only reservation: I think that my friend should congratulate me when I get to where I'm going. She should show a little enthusiasm. But all she says is "arriving at destination, on left." What would it hurt her to offer congratulations?  I'm not asking for a commitment or for flowers.

The navigator has now moved into first place among my prostheses, supplanting the incisor.      

Occupations Not For Me

Here are some career paths that it's just as well I didn't tread.   

1.  Taxi driver in a large city (especially a city that's not on a grid, such as Boston or London. Even the DC-diagonals drive me nuts). I've earlier written about my incapacitating directional disability, but I neglected to mention that I tend to get into a bit of a panic when I'm lost --  I start driving much too fast and far too waywardly. So, dear friends, imagine me a befuddled cabbie, sweating super-profusely, while the fares in back scream bloody murder when I take the exact wrong turn for the fourth consecutive time. It would be a freakin' nightmare. Related occupations that won't work: tour guide, wilderness guide, tracker.

2.  Dog-groomer. I've hinted at my lack of affection for doggies before. I just don't think I'd do a good job blow-drying Fido or brushing Fifi's teeth. (Incidentally, I'm joined in my prejudice against curs by gentle Will himself, whose references to canines are uniformly unfriendly: the superbly wicked sisters in King Lear, for example, are "dog-hearted daughters.")    

3.  Trapeze artist. I'm terrified of heights and I have absolutely no sense of rhythm. Imagine me launching myself at just the right moment to catch my partner by the ankles. Related opportunity for ignominious failure: dance instructor.   

4.  Surgeon.  I'm far too squeamish to be poking around in someone's innards.  Even channel surfing has become a dangerous pastime since we accidentally acquired the live surgery channel.  Motto:  "all gore, all the time."  I have to keep clicking that remote lest I accidentally pause at an open-heart moment. The FCC should mandate a warning and a five-second delay:  "Caution:  palpitating inner organs on view shortly." 

5.  Hostage.  Chained to a bed somewhere in the 'stans wouldn't work for me. I must have my oatmeal every morning at 7 a.m., and I need to move my bowels shortly afterward. Moreover, if I don't eat lunch right on time, I get wicked headaches. Not to mention that I don't function well in rooms that are either too hot or too cold or not well ventilated, and which are peopled with chain-smoking guards. On the whole, I'd be a mighty cranky hostage.    

"Geographical Dyslexia," or "Directional Disability," or, People Who Lose Their Way

[January 17, 2012.  There are at this moment three pages of comments appended to this entry, which I wrote almost six years ago. The comments are most interesting and revealing.  Don't miss 'em -- Vivian].

In The Accidental Tourist (New York [Knopf], 1991), Anne Tyler describes a malady that, as far as I know had never before been acknowledged in literature.  All four of her eccentric Leary siblings share "a total inability to find their way around." Macon Leary, who writes travel books for a living and is the novel's focal character, christens this trait "geographical dyslexia."

I'm not convinced that "geographical dyslexia" is a good name for the Learys' condition. An alternative, "directional disability," is not much better. Whatever the name, sufferers will know what is meant.  There's a class of people (I'm one of them) who are chronically lost; who take a few steps in a strange city and can't find their way back to the hotel; who don't know how to exit the building they've just entered because they've strolled a corridor or two; who are totally befuddled and even panicked when they drive into a familiar intersection from an unaccustomed direction; who break into a cold sweat when someone says, "you know how to get home -- just reverse the directions"; and who, because they're frequently lost, are subject to ridicule and mockery from their very own families and from their most intimate friends.

Macon Leary has a theory about his persistent dysgeographica. He thinks he's disabled because all his life he's moved from house to house, and "people who'd been moved around a great deal never acquired a fixed point of reference, but wandered forever in a fog." I know of no evidence to support this wholly improbable suggestion. Macon clutches at a straw because there's no data (and there's no data, at least in part, because there's no accepted name for his condition).

Every sufferer nurses his own unscientific, anecdotal theory. I was once convinced that my dysgeographica was related to my total absence of rhythm -- as a child I could never learn to pump a swing or even to jump rope. My brother thinks that it must be connected to his aversion to heights. My niece takes the view that it's somehow related to her motion sickness and to her bouts of dizziness. A friend thinks that the trouble stems from the fact that she was naturally left-handed but was trained to be right-handed. In fact, no one knows whether dysgeographica is connected to any other trait, or whether it's one of a cluster of traits. In terms of hard science, the directionally disabled have been allowed to languish in the dark ages.

I'm almost convinced that dysgeographica runs in families. My father was monumentally disabled, and one of my brothers is so impaired that he's occasionally looked to me for directional advice. Barking up the wrong tree, is he!! (I have another brother who always knows exactly where he is -- perhaps he's adopted.) In The Accidental Tourist,  Anne Tyler, who's a very sharp observer of mankind, tellingly attributes dysgeographica to all four Leary siblings.Tyler also notes that Macon has learned how to cope: he "kept a stack of index cards giving detailed directions to the houses of his friends -- even friends he'd known forever." Coping mechanisms are essential to the dysgeographical. When I have to drive any distance without a navigator, I write the directions with a thick pen in a notebook and keep it open on the passenger seat. For some reason, I can't seem to retain more than one or two of the approaching turns in my mind, so I must continually refer to the notebook. Mapquest has proved to be a boon, especially if I remember to print out in very large type.

In The Accidental Tourist, no one pokes fun at the Leary siblings. But in real life, it's considered quite amusing to laugh at the chronically lost. People don't understand that dysgeographica is a disability like colorblindness. I can't say how many times I've been instructed to "concentrate," or "pay attention' -- advice which is just as effective as commanding a color blind person to make an effort to register shades of yellow or blue. Without a label and without a support group, the dysgeographical will continue to be ridiculed. It's time for us to unite. Unless we do so, we are not only doomed, like Macon Leary, to be "adrift upon the planet, helpless, praying that by luck [we] might stumble across [our] destination," but doomed to be humiliated as well.

(July 22, 2007.  I've written again on directional dyslexia.  If anyone is interested, take a look here, here, and here.    And now one more.)  And also.