Digital __ Analog __ [Please check one]

“K, if it is anywhere in the world, it has to be on this block; I just know it,” V says.
“Really? On Curtis? I don’t remember it being on Curtis,” I interject.
“Curtis?” Blank look from V. Don’t names mean anything to these people?
“Yeah this is Curtis and 15th.” It says right there, in bold block letters. Don’t these people SEE?
An indifferent, “Oh” in response.

Apparently, they do see, and very well at that, cos sure enough, we spot the tiny little car as we near the end of the block and V’s ultimatum. It sits there, right in front of our eyes, oblivious to the three hours we’ve spent scouting the streets of downtown Denver, mentally calculating insurance costs and verbally whining to cops in the bone-chilling Colorado winter.

“How did you know.....?” I ask despite myself and brace myself for a response that wouldn’t necessarily mean much to me.
And I get it: “The trees...That’s the only street that has those trees...”
My turn to do the indifferent “Oh”.

Two years later: Different scenario, similar situation:

"I think we should take 18th street dow---", I stop midway cos A is already four feet down 18th.
“What were you saying?” – A.
“Never mind, how did you know we had to take this street? You didn’t even stop to look.”
“That big building over there. Plus, this is the only road that curves this way.”
“Hmmmmm, isn’t it easier to jus look at the sign? 18th street -- can’t go wrong there.”
A disbelieving furrow of the brow. “You mean that tiny little unlit board is more visible than that huge skyscraper two blocks away?”
“Well....” I hadn’t thought of it like that....

I’d always been this way. Hadn’t realized it was weird. I know exactly which ticketing counter at the train station moves the fastest, I can rattle off the bus schedule to the letter, I don’t just assume that the trolley comes every five minutes and I know the intersecting streets for all the Starbucks in the city. In other words, I am happiest when I have all of the information. Without it, I’m lost. It’s like a data piece that I can attach to an item and remember it by. Somewhat like the bands on my agarose gel – numbers 1 through 10, each unique in its own size and shape, nonetheless, I can’t label it ‘thin and narrow’, it’s got to be #7.

I had always thought of it as a strength. It is, to a point. What I didn’t realize was that it was a strength inherently developed to make up for a flaw — an utter lack of observational skills.

I prefer remembering numbers to colors, letters to shapes and symbols to sizes.

V and A (and probably half the section of the population) prefer the world of blues and reds and circles and squares.

We are taught colors and shapes in kindergarten alongside numbers and letters. I think the brain picks a side and stays there – from building blocks at age 2 to street signs at 20.

Now that I think about it, the ceiling fan I drew in pre-school may not have been exactly attractive but it always had the right number of screws. My cousin’s was a lot prettier, but it had no screws. How would the blade hold on? Crazy glue?

I never remember what the cleaning lady looks like, but when I see her in her uniform, I know her name is Cynthia and can call out to her and say hi. I couldn’t always pick out Ewan McGregor from a line-up but I know he was in Moulin Rouge and Trainspotting. Place them in the right context and I am Ms. Know-it-all. Skew their location in time and space, and I couldn’t place them if you put a gun to my head.

I belong to that section of the population that needs a mapquest map to know where they are going and a TO-DO list to see what they are doing. We need the “real” thing – we need the post-it sticky and the yellow pages -- things that we can see and touch, cos we can’t just “feel” and “know”. We need logic, we need proof, we need to make ‘sense’ a 100%, cos the left side upstairs demands it.

We are the ones that don’t always need a calculator, don’t go ga-ga over the blackberry, don’t use the cell phone’s voice activated dialing and don’t configure Microsoft Outlook on our computers. The left side of the brain does it for us, and it isn’t always perfect, but at least we know whom to blame when it goes wrong.

The ‘right’ (no relation to the overbearing wing on Capitol Hill) doesn’t need tangibles and numbers and names. Their brain does all the work as well, but it is so efficient at it, that they don’t see the stages; they only receive the fully processed information --- they have the luxury of calling it ‘intuition’.

Amid the digital cameras and analog watches, I think there is an important distinction we are missing – digital vs. analog human beings – those that remember and those that observe, those that read numbers and those that read shapes, those that need to dig out that piece of information from a corner of the brain and those that “just know”, those that are guided by logic and those that rely on intuition.

In either case it takes two kinds of people to populate the earth -- those that see, and those that follow those that see, so, on the rare occasion that intuition goes awry, they can pull out their Rand McNally and lead the way......We cannot work together cos “15th and Curtis” does not make sense to them and “those trees” don’t make sense to us, but we can sure help each other out, albeit in very different ways...