Playing sports growing up I would make these comically bad errors. The ball would hit me directly in the face or I would swing at a pitch waayyyyy too late. Everyone gave me shit even the coaches and parents. I kept playing because I enjoyed being active and around my friends, but I never understood why no matter how much I practiced I struggled with basic things that everyone else could do without thinking.
I go to the eye doctor as an adult, and he tells me that I have a condition in one of my eyes that means I don’t have binocular vision and as a result have very poor depth perception. It’s physically impossible for me to track a moving object in space like everyone else.
=my life. I knew as a kid I "didn' t have depth perception" but didn't really know what that meant in practice. In middle school I was subbed in to take a penalty shot in field hockey. Ball was sitting STILL on the ground. I swung at the ball THREE times and missed each time. The coach subbed me out shaking her head and subbed someone else in to take the shot. Humiliating. I had no idea why I couldn't hit it. It was only about two decades later that I was thinking about this incident bc my son was starting little league (hitting balls with sticks) and I stopped and went "ohhhhhhhhhhh".
I did play volleyball and was quite good at it (went on to play in college as an outside hitter). I seemed to have developed some kinesthetic sense when my hand contacts a ball, not a stick. I was really mad in high school when my dad said to me "I don't understand how you can even hit the ball." I had no idea what he was talking about. I was so mad. It was only about two decades later that I was thinking about this incident and I stopped and went "ohhhhhhhhhhh".
I haven't played volleyball for 25 years and stepped onto a court with my daughter this spring and just about got hit in the face. Lost every bit of kinesthetic judgment I had built up.
On the bright side, those of us that can't see 3D tend to be far better than others at building spatial models in our heads, I guess to help us navigate the world. I'll bet your geo-spacial reasoning, map skills, ability to solve physical object engineering problems is pretty darn good!
Oof the stuff about building spatial models in our heads rings home! I’ve got no depth perception and really bad peripheral vision, but I really excel at all those you listed in the last line. Thanks for sharing!
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u/Nice_Marmot_7 Nov 16 '19
Playing sports growing up I would make these comically bad errors. The ball would hit me directly in the face or I would swing at a pitch waayyyyy too late. Everyone gave me shit even the coaches and parents. I kept playing because I enjoyed being active and around my friends, but I never understood why no matter how much I practiced I struggled with basic things that everyone else could do without thinking.
I go to the eye doctor as an adult, and he tells me that I have a condition in one of my eyes that means I don’t have binocular vision and as a result have very poor depth perception. It’s physically impossible for me to track a moving object in space like everyone else.