It must be something in my genetic make-up. I must be missing some kind of chromosomal cog in my brain wheel. There’s got to be someone or something I can blame for my lack of ability to truly see “outside the box.”
I’ve known about my “deficiency” for quite some time. “Spatial Thinking” was my lowest score on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) back in 1975. On the test, they showed you three or four dots in a small square, and asked on which of the four options would those dots appear like the pattern if the square were folded in vertically in half.
Ok, maybe you had to be there to get the gist of this, but trust me, I had to make pencil dots all over the provided scratch paper in the hopes of getting at least a few of them right. I just didn’t think like that!
And I still don’t.
Almost two decades ago, playing the electronic game “Tetris” was all the rage. Except that I could never figure out how to twist and turn the image to best make it fit in the space below. And the Rubric’s Cube? Not a prayer.
I’ve never been able to curl my hair, cause in the mirror, everything is backwards, and the result just wasn’t pretty. My guy friends with boats have long known I can’t back a trailer straight down a ramp.
Last week when I tried to maneuver my own car up the beach approach, I had to turn completely around to stare out the back window to make any progress at all. And I still wandered off the hard-packed road and into the sand.
Maybe it’s a gender thing.