LOL...some describe the 4th ID patch as "an aerial photo of four lieutenants with a compass all facing north."
(I did my 2LT time with 1st ID).
Posted on 10/19/2009 12:08:33 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
When Alison Kendall’s boss told her in 2007 that her civil service job was being transferred to a different building in another part of Vancouver, she panicked. Commuting to a new office would be no big deal for most people, she knew. But Kendall might well have the worst sense of direction in the world. For as long as she can remember, she has been unable to perform even the simplest navigational tasks. She needed a family member to escort her to and from school right through the end of grade twelve, and is still able to produce only a highly distorted, detail-free sketch map of her own house. After five years of careful training, she had mastered the bus trip to and from her office, but the slightest deviation left her hopelessly lost. When that happened, the forty-three-year-old had to phone her father to come and pick her up, even if she was just a few blocks from home, in the neighbourhood where she had lived most of her life.
Kendall (not her real name) decided to ask a neuropsychologist if she had medical grounds for turning down the transfer. He referred her to a neuro-ophthalmology clinic at the University of British Columbia, where a young post-doc from Italy named Giuseppe Iaria was studying the neuroscience of orientation and navigation. After a battery of tests, Iaria concluded that Kendall was perfectly normal. She had average intelligence, memory, and mental imaging abilities, and her brain was completely undamaged. She was simply unable to form a “cognitive map,” the mind’s way of representing spatial relationships.
(Excerpt) Read more at walrusmagazine.com ...
Now that’s a sense of direction. I like to think I’m pretty good but I don’t know if I could go at night to someplace I had been to once in the day. Night throws a whole new loop into things.
Bingo, that’s exactly what saved my husband. Four years of an intensive ROTC program and a lot of orienteering.
LOL...some describe the 4th ID patch as "an aerial photo of four lieutenants with a compass all facing north."
(I did my 2LT time with 1st ID).
Kendall was perfectly normal. ... She was simply unable to form a "cognitive map," the mind's way of representing spatial relationships.
I submit that this is not "perfectly normal."
If you’re a real bush dweller (or one of the mountainy people in this part of the country, I refuse to say “Appalachia”) it’s develop your sense of direction or die out there somewhere.
But there is nothing more dangerous than a 2nd LT with a map an a compass and an idea.
/johnny
I'm emailing this to my husband! Hopefully his sense of humor is operational this afternoon.
(ON second thought, maybe I better not. I'm going to look at a Yellow Lab puppy that's the daughter of a good friend's dog.)
Excellent point. As good as my map skills used to be, I'd sure want to have GPS in the middle of a desert with no distinguishing land features around.
Use it or lose it big time. When my kids were younger, I would take them somewhere that they were not familiar, then make them find our way home. After a few tearfull runs and missed dinners, they got real good at land nav.
People were dumb without it. With it they are just dumb people who know where they are.
/johnny
Look up how to make your own compass. Learn to use that compass. Then go out and buy the cheapest plastc compass that pleases your eye. Or if you are inclined, go to Sportsmans Guide and get yourself a neat old army surplus compass.
I resigned as a Captain on the promotion list to Major (it was a Clinton thing, you understand). My best times in the field were as a 2LT with my platoon....
If I listened to my wife we would never get anywhere. I don’t know how many times this conversation has been repeated in our marriage:
Me: I’m turning right.
Wife: Why?
Me: Because that’s the way we need to go to get where we’re going.
Wife: Oh. I would have turned left.
Me: Why?
Wife: I don’t know.
It doesn’t have to be a new destination either. Many times it’s someplace we’ve been before but it doesn’t stick in her head.
Good one. You reminded me of a joke from way back when:
A new platoon leader was out on a night patrol exercise at Fort Lewis. When he realized that he was lost, he got frustrated, keyed the microphone on his field radio and exclaimed:
I'M EFFING LOST!!!
The Division Commander heard the comment and replied, "whoever made that last comment, identify yourself!"
The platoon leader, having had a moment to compose himself, replied:
I may be effing lost, but I'm not effing stupid!
I have some of them written down in my wallet, but no, I don't even attempt to memorize them anymore. I don't even know my own cell number. I have to look it up every time someone asks.
But I do remember numbers from 30 or more years ago that I came to memorize back then by calling them often.
GPS is plugged into every ballistic missile and cruise missile in our arsenal.
I remember phone numbers from back when they had exchanges. They make good passwords because they letters and numbers.
Keep your feet clean and your powder dry.
/johnny
I have a good sense of direction, but my wife navigates by landmarks in typical feminine fashion. My favorite episode is when she was trying to get me to her grandmothers' house early in our marriage and told me "OK, next, turn right just past where the Arby's used to be...!"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.