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My Nonsense of Direction

I can hardly find my way home

Katharine Valentino
The Memoirist

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Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

When I was 4 years old, I could spell my name anytime Mama wanted to show off to her friends:

I musta done my name a hunnert times already, so I really know Kay. Kay starts with a cough, like Mama in the morning.

Ay is just like Kay without the cough. Like Mama after she’s had her tea and I come into the kitchen, and she smiles at me.

Mama’s tea smells good.

Ouch, I always almost forgot aych.

And so forth, until I’ve done every letter in ⓀⒶⓉⒽⒶⓇⒾⓃⒺ.

So, yes, I could spell my name at age 4. What else do kids normally learn at about age 4? Oh, yeah, directions. Left and right.

I could spell all of “left” and two letters of “right.” But I couldn’t do “left” and “right.”

To this day, at age 79, I remember at age 4 holding up both arms and straining my brain to label this appendage as left and that appendage as right, or this one as right and that one as left, and, oh, I give up.

I remember getting lost walking home from school, and the nice lady in the blue house who gave me a cookie and called my mother on the phone to tell her that, once again, I had turned right when I should have turned left.

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