In other news, reversals
Jun. 8th, 2014 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceThis has been going on so long, I may even have posted about it before: but you would think, after more than two years of living here and nearly-five of visiting for increasing periods of time, I would by now have learned which knobs on the cooker control which gas-rings.
Trouble is, to an English-trained sensibility, the knobs are exactly the wrong way around. Four burners in a square, front and back; four knobs in a line, left to right. In every cooker I have ever met, the outside knobs control the rear burners, and the inside control the front. It's been absolutely standard, all my life.
Apparently five years of exposure to a different mind-set is not enough to burn that default out of my hindbrain. I use these knobs every day, many times a day; and I still have to check every time, because if I just trust my fingers, every now and then I still light the wrong burner. Even when I'm thinking about it. It is too hard for me, this learning of new rules.
Trouble is, to an English-trained sensibility, the knobs are exactly the wrong way around. Four burners in a square, front and back; four knobs in a line, left to right. In every cooker I have ever met, the outside knobs control the rear burners, and the inside control the front. It's been absolutely standard, all my life.
Apparently five years of exposure to a different mind-set is not enough to burn that default out of my hindbrain. I use these knobs every day, many times a day; and I still have to check every time, because if I just trust my fingers, every now and then I still light the wrong burner. Even when I'm thinking about it. It is too hard for me, this learning of new rules.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-09 02:50 am (UTC)And how about my mother's stovetop---she got one of those fancy glass cooktops and cleans it so regularly and carefully with the prescribed cleaner that she's cleaned all the knob markings and calibrations off. They were just printed or painted around the knobs. Six knobs. Six burners. Twist and watch to see which turns orange as it heats up.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-09 03:02 am (UTC)