Resist the wheat that is shredded, for the path to the dark side it is
I have remarkably bad sense of direction, and a remarkable confidence in my sense of direction nonetheless. I think that part of my brain still refuses to accept that "north" is not always the same as "forward." The other day, though, I somehow woke up with my internal compass rose not only off but backwards. While I wouldn't say I depend on it, I am a fan of the classic compass-labelling mnemonic "Never Eat Shredded Wheat," (I also enjoy singing the alphabet to myself while searching for a word in a dictionary) but the other day it was like Yoda was telepathically warning me to "Never Wheat Shredded Eat." I actually used the location of the sun to figure out which way I was facing and *still* ended up walking in the wrongest possible direction. I think my thought process went something like, "Let's see, it's morning, and the sun is that way, so that's east. I've lived in California for the past five years, and so of course I know that 'east' means 'away from the ocean.' And I'm in Boston now, so 'away from the ocean' means 'toward New York.' So I'm standing in Boston, facing New York, therefore Canada's on my right... okay, I want to go north, so I'll go right." No! It doesn't work that way at all.
Recently at school we reached the point in every geometry class when the teacher folds up a copy of the syllabus and makes a mobius strip out of it. I love how some activities just never stop being developmentally appropriate. Anyway, the professor talked about how if we were two dimensional people living in a mobius strip, and if we walked all the way around the mobius strip, we would arrive at our starting location but find that our notions of "east" and "west" were now the opposite of everyone else's. I had to resist the urge to shout out, "That happened to me the other day!"
Recently at school we reached the point in every geometry class when the teacher folds up a copy of the syllabus and makes a mobius strip out of it. I love how some activities just never stop being developmentally appropriate. Anyway, the professor talked about how if we were two dimensional people living in a mobius strip, and if we walked all the way around the mobius strip, we would arrive at our starting location but find that our notions of "east" and "west" were now the opposite of everyone else's. I had to resist the urge to shout out, "That happened to me the other day!"