Instructions

 I can't read instructions. 

I don't mean I can't read them. I understand what the words mean. I can make out the letters. 

It's just when I try to act on them, comprehend them, I somehow mess it all up. It's not a "I can't do anything right!" kind of thing either. I just go into a sort of blindspot situation. 

I tear into packaging all wrong. I once opened an M&S sandwich from the side and wiggled it out sideways. I can open cereal boxes but the little freshness tab at the top is a luxury I have yet to experience, with mine forever a torn up mess.

 I remember when I first learnt to drive I'd see signs with "Shoulder Closed" appearing in the distance and I'd panic. Shoulder closed! Oh no! And I'd grip the wheel and look around and keep driving and then the sign would disappear and I'd wipe my brow, phew, managed to slip myself out of that tight spot. Years later I discovered the sign was simply telling me I could not pull over here. 

The first time I did a home Covid test, I read the instructions about ten times -- and still fucked it up. The more logical I try to be, the more of Occam's razor I try to apply, the more likely I am to completely misunderstand an instruction and do something completely insane instead. 

Ironically, I have a graduate diploma in instructions. Technical writing, it's called. I studied instructions for a year. I had to critique bad ones, and later on, write my own. I have no idea how I passed this. 

What's even more ironic is that I did it before I finished my undergraduate degree. I thought I'd finished it, but once I completed the diploma I discovered I had another year to go. I had, simply, not done the electives. I had elected not to do them.

And so, in a neat little circle, we come back to my inability to read instructions. I'm just man who might be still in the middle of higher education, opening sandwiches from the wrong end, worried about closed shoulders that he didn't need to use anyway.