First Signs

This weekend I managed to move the cable that comes out of the wall from the back of the telly and into the cable box, to a surge protector, and then to connect a new cable from the surge protector to the back of the telly.

It only took me fifty five minutes. The bulk of which time was experimenting over and over again and trying to work out - I still don't know, if when you screw something in clockwise when the screw hole is face up, does that mean the same applies (i.e. clockwise) when you are screwing it in horizontally?

I tried to work it out, by holding the surge protector at different angles so that it was the same orientation as the telly which is mounted on the wall. I went away from it all and tried Googling to get the solution. I tried to conceptualise it. And in the end I went back to my old tried and true way - of trial and error.

It's a family thing. Anything involving point in space is a challenge to us. I used to wonder why everyone in my family was forever getting lost. No one in my family could find their way to anywhere.

When I was a young mother, I'd tell my kids we going to the zoo for a picnic.

Mummy's taking us to the zoo tomorrow
Zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow;
Mummy's taking us to the zoo tomorrow,
And we can stay all day.

They'd sing in their childish voices. But not for long. For some bizarre reason which I've yet to work out, we'd pass the Royal Melbourne Zoological Gardens on our left, time and time again. We'd fly past, but could never get back to the car park. Mostly we'd end up at the Melbourne Airport, just in time to turn around to go home before darkness fell.

Mummy's taking us to the planes tomorrow
Planes tomorrow, planes tomorrow;
Mummy's taking us to the planes tomorrow,
And it will take all day.

Sarcastic little buggers ...

I'd break into a sweat with nerves as the zoo sailed past for the umpteenth time on my left.

There came a time when my children dreaded getting in the car with me if they knew we were to go further than the local shopping centre. So much did they worry about being lost, that they'd even decline suggestions that I'd take them somewhere that other children would be rapt over. We were living near Bell's Beach when my children were small, and all the little kids were having days at the Geelong Show. Sample bags were the rage. "Hop in the car kids", I'd say. "I'm taking you to the Show!"

But where was the joy on those little faces? Instead I saw barely disguised horror. "How will you FIND it?" they asked.

"Don't worry", I'd tell them, "I'll see another car on the road with little kids in the back, and I'll follow it".

"Which I did," to the sound of two little people in the back seat wailing, "But what if they aren't even GOING to the SHOW? What if they are visiting their grandma? We don't want to visit a strange grandma."

I'd remember my own childhood. An access visit with my dad. He promised to take me and my brother to the Healesville Wild Life Sanctuary. He picked us up from our house in Elsternwick at 10 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. we were in Coburg. Anyone knowing Melbourne would know how ridiculous it was. "Can we just go home?" we asked. But he insisted.

Many hours later we arrived in Healesville. Bill couldn't find the sanctuary. He'd stop and wind the driver-side window down and ask some poor unsuspecting passer-by, in his best theatrical Sir Laurence Olivier accent, "Can you direct me to the Sir Colin Mackenzie Sanctuary?" he'd ask while we huddled down out of site in embarrassment. And then would come the answer, inevitably spoken in heavily rural-Australian accent. Upon which, Bill would wind the window up again in mid-sentence and mutter, "Never normal people!"

Nope, never normal. My own spatial dyslexia continued into adulthood. I don't know how many times I lost my car in car parks and side streets all over Melbourne. I'd walk around for hours, frantic, and thinking perhaps that the only way I'd ever get it back, was when the City Council started sending me parking tickets.

Then there were those terrible days at "Play Group". A group of us child-centered parents would meet at the communal hall in Launching Place where we lived when the children were very small. At the end of each session the mothers would tidy up the toys. I particularly remember a jigsaw elephant with five pieces. Five Easy Pieces - I avoided attempting putting it together like the plague.

My mother and brother are the same. We can't read maps or understand architectural blueprints. I was always highly embarrassed when I'd get lost in buildings I'd work in, or in hospitals where I was a patient. And then I read Anne Tyler's "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant". There's a whole family of spatial dyslexics in that novel. I was not alone!

I made up the term "spatially dyslexic". I found it easier to have a label to put on my 'condition'. It made it easier to explain to friends and colleagues when I'd get lost.

Last year I was called for jury duty in New York. I was selected for the jury pool in a prominent case. A hundred potential jurors were in the initial pool which was gradually whittled down to twenty. So there I was, sitting in the jury box, getting questioned by New York attorneys.

We were asked a variety of questions. About our attitude to the medical profession, whether we agreed with large compensation payments, whether we had ever worked in a hospital. After I answered one about born-again Christians, I was called into the judge's chambers. Without hesitation I followed her and the attorneys to her rooms. They interrogated me for a bit and then told me I could go.

I was aghast. Go? Weren't they going too? How could I get back if there was no one to follow?

I liked the judge. She seemed kindly and was smartly dressed. I'd liked the way she'd called on a point of order when one of the attorneys had referred to Bush as "Our President". She'd banged with her hammer and ruled him out of order with "Correction - he might be YOUR president, but he is not OURS!"

I could relate to this woman, so I just straight out told her that there was no way I could find my way back, as I was spatially dyslexic. She didn't blink. "Oh is that what YOU call it?" she said, "I'm one too, but I've always referred to myself as a "geographic moron".

So the judge and Anne Tyler have given me back some confidence. I'm a lot better now. When faced with a task that involves points inspace, I just take a deep breath and decide that I'll do it - even if it takes some time. And it has worked.

I can now assemble two cables in under sixty minutes. .

Till next time,


Kate Juliff
New York
August 2006