It's eleventy-thirty, time for tea...
Mar. 1st, 2006 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiSomething that I've really only begun to admit to people recently:
I have a lot of trouble reading analog clocks, and always have. I mean, to the point that when I look at a clock on the wall, it's usually as meaningless as a wall socket or anything else that just sits on the wall, anything else you just tune out automatically.
I could blame this on spacing somewhat through the "telling time" lessons we all had in school, but the thing is, I have spaced through the formal instruction of many, many concepts and still managed to pick them up in my own way. I know we had worksheets on this, and normally that would be enough to catch me up, but just looking at the little clock diagrams panicked me as a kid because they seemed so utterly incomprehensible, and everyone understood them but me.
The worksheets...we had some problems where the time was already drawn on the clock, and we had to write down what it was, and some where we were given the time, and had to draw the hands on ourselves. I think I could manage to identify 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 if the hands were already drawn on the clock, but I had trouble producing the right diagram myself if I was just given the time. I didn't seem to have a sense of right angles, so it was hard to draw even the "easy" ones. And the rest terrified me.
The teacher decided I was being lazy (probably because I was obviously bright), and had me do the problems on the sheet over and over again to get them right. Stop fooling around! Just do the work properly! I vaguely remember cheating off other kids, guessing, that kind of thing. Eventually the teacher figured I had it down well enough, and we moved on...and that was the last I ever wanted to see of those damn clocks! Maybe my school was deficient, but I don't think we were taught time concepts more than two separate years, and it was the same story the next year. I haven't found any mention of difficulty with time concepts in my report cards.
I had analog watches my parents bought me, and I lost them frequently. I didn't take much care of them, because they were nothing but itchy wrist decorations to me. I actually got teased for my inability to tell time, if you can believe that. (Other kids will truly tease each other for anything.) I think someone must have asked me what time it was, and I panicked.
I did pick up the idea of a 24-hour day along the way, and what times of the day were what. (i.e. twelve noon is lunch, six is dinner time, eight am is morning, three pm afternoon, etc.) I learned a sense of what "half an hour" was, and what "15 minutes" felt like. However, my grasp of fractions was weak enough that I didn't realize what "quarter to" and "quarter after" were supposed to mean until I was explicitly told at around 11 or 12 or so. (Drove my parents nuts...they always were telling me to be ready to go somewhere at "quarter to four," and I would be proud to be ready "on time" at four because "quarter to" was meaningless.) But I still couldn't read the times on a clock.
At age 12, my parents bought me a digital watch, to indicate the greater responsibilities I was taking on with my entrance to junior high. I had to get myself places on time now. They gave me dire warnings about not losing THIS watch, but there was no way I was losing that thing. Suddenly, I knew what time it was, anytime I wanted! I could handle the digital format no problem. Like a lot of ADD people I guess, I got dependent on knowing the time down to the last second. I still couldn't read an analog clock, but who cared? I didn't have to - someone had made a DIGITAL one! Time was now forever accessible!
My parents had no clue. When I was home from school on the weekends and not wearing my watch, they often asked me to tell them the time because they didn't want to get up from whatever they were working on, and I would be running around the house. "Dan, can you go to the kitchen and tell me the time?"
We had two clocks in the kitchen: an analog clock on the wall at the entrance, and a digital clock at the far end on the microwave. Every time my parents asked me to tell them the time, I would bypass the wall clock and run down to the end of the kitchen to read the microwave digital. My parents heard me doing this and asked me over and over why I was taking the time to run the length of the kitchen. At first I didn't want to say, but eventually I told them the straight truth:
"I can't read the wall clock."
They didn't believe me; or at least, they thought I was exaggerating or something. Oh, stop it, I know you can read the wall clock! I know it only has four numbers on it, but it's just like one with all twelve numbers. Stop and read it, don't get lazy now. (I don't know why they thought I'd run the length of the kitchen just to be lazy.) Over and over, I repeated the same explanation. I can't read that clock. No, I can't read it.
Finally, it was my father who really heard me say it. He stopped what he was doing one day when I was 13 - I think he was putting together a set of Ikea shelves - and asked me, "What do you mean, you can't read the wall clock?"
It still took him a bit to grasp the point. He stood me in front of the wall clock and asked me to identify the time. He asked me where the hands would be at such-and-such a time. Only after he'd forced me to produce several incorrect answers did he get that I really couldn't read the clock. He asked me how I could possibly not have learned how to do this by eighth grade, and I just shrugged. I just didn't, that's all.
He and my mother had a crisis consultation together late that night. They went out together the next day (I believe it was a Sunday), and came back with packages. They sat me down at the kitchen table and showed me that the packages contained plenty of clock manipulatives and worksheets that they'd picked up from an educational supply store in our city.
"Dan, you have to be able to read a clock," is what I think they said. "So you're going to work on these worksheets today. We'll explain anything you don't get, but you're going to do these sheets until you get all the problems right. We'll keep going out and getting more until you can really do them. Do you understand?" I did, and I agreed. They were being incredibly supportive, and I was finally going to get this time thing licked.
And I did, in a way. It took a bit of playing with those damn cardboard clocks, spinning the hands around the faces, and it took one-on-one tutoring on and off with both of my parents. But I mastered the sheets, without the pressure of finishing in class time. I've always been good at picking up concepts, and at that point, the clock concepts were simple enough that once I had a chance to have them explained clearly one-on-one, I got them down fairly well. I finished all the sheets, my parents were proud, and everyone was happy. All's well that ends well.
Except...it didn't end PERFECTLY.
With certain things, especially numbers-related things, I seem to need a constant amount of practice and repetition to keep it in my skull. I went back to using digital clocks as much as possible, because reading an analog clock was still so much work, and I think I lost almost all speed I gained at it for those days of worksheets. I CAN read an analog clock now, although it seems to take me a lot longer than other people, but it's certainly not natural for me just to be able to look at a clock and know what time it is.
I can have "good days" where I look at a clock and read the time, and those always amaze me...I always double-check, because I never believe I read it right the first time.
My "average" days involve taking several seconds to a couple of minutes to read an analog clock. My thought processes go something like: Okay, so there's two hands. One is the "big" hand, and one is "small." Which one is big? Must be the longer one. I typically mix this up the first time. Okay, and the long one points at the bigger unit, which is hours. So it's... Insert moment of confusion trying to determine the hour. I frequently see the arm between, say, 8 and 9, and then read it as 9 if the arm is closer to that number. I forget that the arm is actually supposed to be on the number it's indicating, or after it, not before. Okay, it's three. And the fat arm is pointing almost to the five, so that's... Blank out. Counting by fives. About 24, 25ish. 3:25! At this point, a nagging sense that something is wrong usually prompts me to check my answer, at which point I will remember, NO WAIT! The long arm is "small" because it's skinny! It's longer to point to the minutes, which are farther out on the face! Then I go through the whole second part above AGAIN to determine that it's actually 4:15.
My "bad" days...the clock face is, for some reason, incomprehensible. I just stare at it with the vague sense that the numbers and the hands are supposed to mean something...but I'm not sure what. It's this fuzzy sort of blankness in my brain.
I can generally handle concepts of time fine (although when I get sent on my break at work, I'm typically counting on my fingers to determine what time I should go back at). It's mostly the freakin' analog clock that gives me grief!
I had a watch bust several months ago, and I went to the late-night sells-everything mart to see if they sold watches. One of the employees assured me they did, and then pointed me to a stand where all the watches on sale were analog. I had a weird moment when I realized that most people would not consider relatively nice leather band watches to be expensive bracelets the way I do, since I'd just be setting myself up for frustration and panicked running around if I bought an analog watch and tried to function by it.
I was at work (Taco Time) a few weeks back, and a co-worker stuck on rail asked me to tell her the time, and insisted that I read it off the wall clock in the kitchen, which is the "official" time we go by at our store. I stood there with my face screwed up, and I was having a bad-to-average day, so I stood there for a while trying to figure out what the hands were for. The store went dead quiet, except for someone muttering, "You can't read a CLOCK?" The pressure didn't help, and the co-worker who'd asked finally had to step in and tell everyone to back off.
I guess I feel like this has been building up lately...the realization that I don't know anyone with the same issue, and I feel alone with this and utterly stupid.
I just wanted to get that off my chest.
(Cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
adults_add.)
I have a lot of trouble reading analog clocks, and always have. I mean, to the point that when I look at a clock on the wall, it's usually as meaningless as a wall socket or anything else that just sits on the wall, anything else you just tune out automatically.
I could blame this on spacing somewhat through the "telling time" lessons we all had in school, but the thing is, I have spaced through the formal instruction of many, many concepts and still managed to pick them up in my own way. I know we had worksheets on this, and normally that would be enough to catch me up, but just looking at the little clock diagrams panicked me as a kid because they seemed so utterly incomprehensible, and everyone understood them but me.
The worksheets...we had some problems where the time was already drawn on the clock, and we had to write down what it was, and some where we were given the time, and had to draw the hands on ourselves. I think I could manage to identify 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 if the hands were already drawn on the clock, but I had trouble producing the right diagram myself if I was just given the time. I didn't seem to have a sense of right angles, so it was hard to draw even the "easy" ones. And the rest terrified me.
The teacher decided I was being lazy (probably because I was obviously bright), and had me do the problems on the sheet over and over again to get them right. Stop fooling around! Just do the work properly! I vaguely remember cheating off other kids, guessing, that kind of thing. Eventually the teacher figured I had it down well enough, and we moved on...and that was the last I ever wanted to see of those damn clocks! Maybe my school was deficient, but I don't think we were taught time concepts more than two separate years, and it was the same story the next year. I haven't found any mention of difficulty with time concepts in my report cards.
I had analog watches my parents bought me, and I lost them frequently. I didn't take much care of them, because they were nothing but itchy wrist decorations to me. I actually got teased for my inability to tell time, if you can believe that. (Other kids will truly tease each other for anything.) I think someone must have asked me what time it was, and I panicked.
I did pick up the idea of a 24-hour day along the way, and what times of the day were what. (i.e. twelve noon is lunch, six is dinner time, eight am is morning, three pm afternoon, etc.) I learned a sense of what "half an hour" was, and what "15 minutes" felt like. However, my grasp of fractions was weak enough that I didn't realize what "quarter to" and "quarter after" were supposed to mean until I was explicitly told at around 11 or 12 or so. (Drove my parents nuts...they always were telling me to be ready to go somewhere at "quarter to four," and I would be proud to be ready "on time" at four because "quarter to" was meaningless.) But I still couldn't read the times on a clock.
At age 12, my parents bought me a digital watch, to indicate the greater responsibilities I was taking on with my entrance to junior high. I had to get myself places on time now. They gave me dire warnings about not losing THIS watch, but there was no way I was losing that thing. Suddenly, I knew what time it was, anytime I wanted! I could handle the digital format no problem. Like a lot of ADD people I guess, I got dependent on knowing the time down to the last second. I still couldn't read an analog clock, but who cared? I didn't have to - someone had made a DIGITAL one! Time was now forever accessible!
My parents had no clue. When I was home from school on the weekends and not wearing my watch, they often asked me to tell them the time because they didn't want to get up from whatever they were working on, and I would be running around the house. "Dan, can you go to the kitchen and tell me the time?"
We had two clocks in the kitchen: an analog clock on the wall at the entrance, and a digital clock at the far end on the microwave. Every time my parents asked me to tell them the time, I would bypass the wall clock and run down to the end of the kitchen to read the microwave digital. My parents heard me doing this and asked me over and over why I was taking the time to run the length of the kitchen. At first I didn't want to say, but eventually I told them the straight truth:
"I can't read the wall clock."
They didn't believe me; or at least, they thought I was exaggerating or something. Oh, stop it, I know you can read the wall clock! I know it only has four numbers on it, but it's just like one with all twelve numbers. Stop and read it, don't get lazy now. (I don't know why they thought I'd run the length of the kitchen just to be lazy.) Over and over, I repeated the same explanation. I can't read that clock. No, I can't read it.
Finally, it was my father who really heard me say it. He stopped what he was doing one day when I was 13 - I think he was putting together a set of Ikea shelves - and asked me, "What do you mean, you can't read the wall clock?"
It still took him a bit to grasp the point. He stood me in front of the wall clock and asked me to identify the time. He asked me where the hands would be at such-and-such a time. Only after he'd forced me to produce several incorrect answers did he get that I really couldn't read the clock. He asked me how I could possibly not have learned how to do this by eighth grade, and I just shrugged. I just didn't, that's all.
He and my mother had a crisis consultation together late that night. They went out together the next day (I believe it was a Sunday), and came back with packages. They sat me down at the kitchen table and showed me that the packages contained plenty of clock manipulatives and worksheets that they'd picked up from an educational supply store in our city.
"Dan, you have to be able to read a clock," is what I think they said. "So you're going to work on these worksheets today. We'll explain anything you don't get, but you're going to do these sheets until you get all the problems right. We'll keep going out and getting more until you can really do them. Do you understand?" I did, and I agreed. They were being incredibly supportive, and I was finally going to get this time thing licked.
And I did, in a way. It took a bit of playing with those damn cardboard clocks, spinning the hands around the faces, and it took one-on-one tutoring on and off with both of my parents. But I mastered the sheets, without the pressure of finishing in class time. I've always been good at picking up concepts, and at that point, the clock concepts were simple enough that once I had a chance to have them explained clearly one-on-one, I got them down fairly well. I finished all the sheets, my parents were proud, and everyone was happy. All's well that ends well.
Except...it didn't end PERFECTLY.
With certain things, especially numbers-related things, I seem to need a constant amount of practice and repetition to keep it in my skull. I went back to using digital clocks as much as possible, because reading an analog clock was still so much work, and I think I lost almost all speed I gained at it for those days of worksheets. I CAN read an analog clock now, although it seems to take me a lot longer than other people, but it's certainly not natural for me just to be able to look at a clock and know what time it is.
I can have "good days" where I look at a clock and read the time, and those always amaze me...I always double-check, because I never believe I read it right the first time.
My "average" days involve taking several seconds to a couple of minutes to read an analog clock. My thought processes go something like: Okay, so there's two hands. One is the "big" hand, and one is "small." Which one is big? Must be the longer one. I typically mix this up the first time. Okay, and the long one points at the bigger unit, which is hours. So it's... Insert moment of confusion trying to determine the hour. I frequently see the arm between, say, 8 and 9, and then read it as 9 if the arm is closer to that number. I forget that the arm is actually supposed to be on the number it's indicating, or after it, not before. Okay, it's three. And the fat arm is pointing almost to the five, so that's... Blank out. Counting by fives. About 24, 25ish. 3:25! At this point, a nagging sense that something is wrong usually prompts me to check my answer, at which point I will remember, NO WAIT! The long arm is "small" because it's skinny! It's longer to point to the minutes, which are farther out on the face! Then I go through the whole second part above AGAIN to determine that it's actually 4:15.
My "bad" days...the clock face is, for some reason, incomprehensible. I just stare at it with the vague sense that the numbers and the hands are supposed to mean something...but I'm not sure what. It's this fuzzy sort of blankness in my brain.
I can generally handle concepts of time fine (although when I get sent on my break at work, I'm typically counting on my fingers to determine what time I should go back at). It's mostly the freakin' analog clock that gives me grief!
I had a watch bust several months ago, and I went to the late-night sells-everything mart to see if they sold watches. One of the employees assured me they did, and then pointed me to a stand where all the watches on sale were analog. I had a weird moment when I realized that most people would not consider relatively nice leather band watches to be expensive bracelets the way I do, since I'd just be setting myself up for frustration and panicked running around if I bought an analog watch and tried to function by it.
I was at work (Taco Time) a few weeks back, and a co-worker stuck on rail asked me to tell her the time, and insisted that I read it off the wall clock in the kitchen, which is the "official" time we go by at our store. I stood there with my face screwed up, and I was having a bad-to-average day, so I stood there for a while trying to figure out what the hands were for. The store went dead quiet, except for someone muttering, "You can't read a CLOCK?" The pressure didn't help, and the co-worker who'd asked finally had to step in and tell everyone to back off.
I guess I feel like this has been building up lately...the realization that I don't know anyone with the same issue, and I feel alone with this and utterly stupid.
I just wanted to get that off my chest.
(Cross-posted to
adults_add.)