The comical and anxious lives of people who don’t know right from left – VnExpress International

Recently, I was sitting behind my husband on a motorcycle, looking at a map to guide him to a meeting, when at a three-way intersection I confidently told him to turn right, even though the screen said to turn left.

The mistake forced the couple to drive an additional five kilometers and arrive 20 minutes late. On the way home, Huong said she endured his complaints throughout the trip.

From an early age, Huong was often teased by his classmates. During gym class, when the class leader yells at her to turn left, she is the only one who turns right. Throughout her 18 years at school, the nickname “Fon the Sense of Direction” stuck with her.

She once tried wearing a ring on her right hand as a reminder, but when she forgot it, she got confused again.

“Now we don’t give verbal commands, we just tap the driver on the shoulder to signal,” she says.

Neuroscience calls her condition left-right confusion (LRC). People with LRC can read maps and indicate directions with gestures, but they have trouble verbalizing “left” and “right” quickly or processing verbal direction cues.

Quoc Tuan, 29, from Hung Yen Province, faces a similar struggle, with friends calling him a “broken compass.” When I was a student, I once asked my parents to buy me a watch to wear on my left wrist to alleviate confusion.

But his most embarrassing memory is from his university’s military training program. When the instructor yelled, “Turn right!”, Tuan turned left and accidentally hit the soldier behind him with his rifle. He repeated the mistake four or five times, and the entire platoon was punished by going around the yard.

At a wedding in late 2024, when the officiant suggested the bride put a ring on her right hand, Tuan grabbed her left hand instead. After being warned, she almost put the ring on her left hand in a hurry, causing laughter from the guests.

When Tuan took his driving test in June 2025, the instructor told him to turn left at an intersection, but instead he turned right.

“Nearly 30 years after I was born, I still feel like a broken machine, unable to distinguish between these two fundamental orientations,” he laments.

Dr. Doan Van Phuc, vice president and former head of neurology at Hanoi’s Duc Giang General Hospital, said that although no large-scale studies have been conducted on LRC in Vietnam, it is estimated that 15 to 18 percent of the world’s population suffers from the condition.

This problem occurs when the parietal lobe, an area near the top of the brain responsible for processing physical sensations and spatial awareness, is damaged.

“This is the main reason why some people lose the ability to distinguish between right and left,” Hook says.

Neurology experts say the cause could be a congenital abnormality or accidental trauma. People with this disease usually live with it for the rest of their lives.

However, even without brain damage, many people end up misdirected, often due to psychological stress and mental overload.

“Stress-related cognitive disruptions are temporary and usually disappear once your mental state stabilizes,” Hook says.

Professor Ineke van der Ham from Leiden University in the Netherlands explained that people rarely confuse up and down, but left and right are more difficult to distinguish because left and right are spatially symmetrical. Her 2020 study found that about 15% of people rated themselves as having a poor ability to tell right from left.

A 2016 study by Professor Gerald Gormley et al. Canadian Medical Association Journal A survey of 800 adults found that 17% of women and 9% of men suffer from this problem. According to the researchers, determining orientation requires a coordinated interaction between memory, language processing, and visuospatial reasoning.

Many people with LRC develop personal strategies for coping. VnExpress find. Some people identify their hands by moles or scars. Others use simple but ingenious tricks. To do this, raise your thumbs and index fingers on both hands and make an “L” shape with your hands pointing to the left.

Some people always wear a ring or watch on one hand to remember.

Truc Anh, from Ho Chi Minh City, has had a tattooist mark his left wrist and middle finger to help him distinguish direction. Photo courtesy of Anne

However, for Truc Anh, a 28-year-old resident of Ho Chi Minh City, these were not necessarily realistic and he opted for a permanent solution. It was a heart tattoo on the middle finger of his left hand and a star tattoo on his wrist.

“When I’m typing, I see a heart on my finger and I know it’s my left hand,” she explains. “If you turn your palms up while driving, the star on your wrist will help orient you.”

She says life has become “so much easier” since getting the tattoo.

Mr Gormley says this is a really difficult thing and hopes the public will have a better understanding of LRC patients and that they will be given enough time to reconsider their decision.