Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an expert’s guide on How to Tell Left from Right! I’m sure you all have heard these two monstrous terms before, and as kindergarten inches further and further away, they seem to blend into each other. “On your left”, “Turn towards your right”, but what does it mean? Here’s a handy dandy guide to refresh yourself on that! Step One: Make Sure You Have Two Sides The first step here is to check that you have a body, and that it has two distinct sides (Hint: look for shoulders). You first need to exist in order to successfully follow this guide, hmm? (Sorry, non-corporeals. Maybe I can do something for you all later?) Step Two: Find a Remote Location, Outdoors Worried about others judging you for following this guide? Fear not! Walk yourself to your nearest field, preferably where you can see the sun (which will come in handy later). Make sure there’s no one around, and if there is, find some way to get rid of them! Now, get comfy, and wait until the sun reaches the horizon. Step Three: Sunset See that sunset (make sure it’s not sunrise)? That’s vaguely in a direction we call west! That means if you were to rotate yourself exactly 180 degrees, you’d be facing vaguely east. Isn’t that cool? Now, turn back to face the sunset, where we’ll perform our next step. Step Four: Rocks Go out there and gather some good-sized stones, but be quick! We don’t want the sun to disappear. (If desired, rock-gathering can happen post step 2 and pre step 3). Now, build a circle around yourself with the rocks, and ensure that it’s somewhat even. Mark vague west (the direction of the setting sun) with a sharpied “W” on a rock, and the same for east (but with “E”). Congrats, you won’t lose your place! Step Five: Finding North and South If it’s sunset, which it should be, then it shouldn’t be long before the stars rise. Camp out in your cozy rock circle for a bit, and wait until it’s completely dark. Then, look towards the sky, and search out the Big Dipper from the stars! It… kinda looks like a dipper, I guess? If needed, phone a friend. Look towards the two end stars making the edge of the spoon, and follow the length five-ish times to find Polaris (the north star!). I don’t know, try your best with this one. Anyways, once you’ve found Polaris, that’s North! Add this to your rock circle. This leaves the final direction to be South, opposite of North. Step Six: Your Compass Congrats, you should have made yourself a vaguely accurate compass! Do a little dance inside the newly formed compass to assert your dominance under the night sky. (Clarification: This is not optional.) Step Seven: Left and Right Oh, right - we’re still looking for left and right, are we? Now that we’ve established a sense of direction, it should be easier! Turn yourself so that you’re facing north (refer to your rocks). The arm that’s facing west can be established as left, and the eastward arm is your right! Congratulations, you’ve figured it out! BONUS: Memorization Device Hold your hands out (palms down), and move your thumbs so that they’re exactly horizontal. Make sure your pointer fingers are exactly vertical. The hand that makes an L (it looks like: “L”) is (L)eft, and the other is Right! DISCLAIMER: No, this could not have been done earlier. You first have to do the Rock Ritual to unlock this memorization device. Totally.
