Telling Right from Left

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Almost all of my friends have at least one trick to compensate for that maddening skill that somehow got skipped on their inventory before birth.

I know several highly competent—gifted, even—adults who need to stop and figure out “left” and “right” by surreptitiously forming the letter “L” with their thumbs and forefingers, noting that the hand that forms the correct orientation of the “L” is their left.

Me? Apparently I got a broken hippocampus: I was born without an inner GPS. I have the sense of direction of a mandarin orange: there is none. Stop me in the middle of a sentence and ask me to immediately point to where “home” is, and I will be, 100% of the time, wrong.

My compensating trick? A GPS on every device and dashboard.

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For Rick, the challenge lies in keeping “horizontal” and “vertical” straight. Fortunately for Rick and his fellow sufferers, the trick in this case is embedded right in the word itself: the “horizon” is “horizontal.”

Someone should quietly mention the trick to this seller on Amazon:



SACAS Funky Black & White Horizontal Stripes Opaque Tights

In all fairness, maybe she’s just a visionary thinker and has fast-forwarded to the end of the evening when she’s no longer vertical.

And for all our readers who are considering showing up as a zebra for Halloween, you’re welcome.