WHAT LITTLE SANDRA MISTOOK

Here are a few slightly foolish mistakes I commonly made as a Baby-Spice-twintailed kid, even as a toddler, and some of them in my nerdy tomboy short-haired adolescence, because of similarities between these concepts' names or shapes! You wouldn't believe it, seriously!

1) Pulp Fiction is Full Monty.
CAUSE: Lexical similarity between "Pulp" and "Full" (four-letter English words with -UL- in the middle), in popular 1990s Anglophone comedies with a full-English title written in condensed bold all caps in the same red-and-yellow colour scheme, and whose highlight was the leading cast performing a catchy signature dance.
DEBUNKED: By reading reviews and watching footage from both films, I came to realise that, in spite of the ostensible similarities between the words Pulp and Full, and between the respective poster titles, both films are essentially as different as chalk is from cheese: the former is a snarky and blood-spluttering Tarantino flick noir; the latter a socially critical British comedy about stripteasing former steelworkers.
2) Black Lagoon is Gurren Lagann.
CAUSE: Lexical similarity between "Lagoon" and "Lagann," and between a few characters' hair colour (especially the respective female leads') across series.
DEBUNKED: By reading anime reviews and watching footage from both anime series, I came to realise that, in spite of the ostensible similarities between the words Lagoon and Lagann, and between the heroines Revy and Yoko, both series are essentially as different as chalk is from cheese: one of them (Gurren Lagann) being a light and soft sci-fi epic, the other (Black Lagoon) a dark and edgy realistic series noir.
3) The left of others equals my left; ditto for the right.
CAUSE: "The left is your writing hand, also the arm with the birthmarks" was how my Spanish- and Swedish-speaking elders helped me clear my left-right confusion, unfortunately and unwittingly creating a further bungle. If I were facing someone else, even my mirror image or a fictional character, I would say that their eye facing my left side is their left eye.
DEBUNKED: The gunshot on Lord Nelson's left shoulder at Trafalgar proved the most influential clue in this aspect: from looking at depictions of the wounded and dying admiral, I realized that my right faced and still faces Horatio's (and everyone else's) left.
4) Woodsorrels are real clovers.
CAUSE: Clovers on screen and in storybooks look exactly like woodsorrels (Oxalis stricta) with heart-shaped (instead of circular) leaves.
DEBUNKED: Elsa Beskow's The Flower Festival (Blomsterfesten) set the record straight in my mind by featuring woodsorrels and clovers personified in the same illustration; the former with heart-shaped leaves and yellow star-shaped flowers, the latter with circular leaves and red or white pompom flowers.
5) Littlefinger is the bald eunuch... another name for Varys/the Spider, right?
CAUSE: I was 15 when I began the first GoT novel, and it turns out that I had a limit back then (add that I was constantly on an uphill struggle with Maths and bullies!) for holding up all the names and relationships! I had already got to make enough of an effort to tell Jaime and Cersei from Visy and Dany, remembering that the Targs were a lighter shade of blond than the Lannisters and (Targs) had violet eyes instead of green! Add the Stark children, the Baratheon brothers, and the other Lannisters, aside from Drogo, Jorah, and the handmaids across the pond, and the ensuing relationship grid was a good-sized mind map the kind I have and then had for a Shakespearean play or mythological pantheon... when we got to court, to the Red Keep, it came as no surprise that I messed up with Varys and Petyr!!
DEBUNKED: Reading the graphic novels and watching the TV series helped me get the characters right in my mind's eye and have a clear, non-confusing picture of who each and one of them was. Again, these two proved as different as chalk is from cheese... or maybe the Spider and the Mockingbird are not that different at heart?

SPEAKING OF THE LEFT AND RIGHT...

...here is an excerpt from a post-modern deconstructive retelling of Jonah. I have chosen it because it refers to multinational companies and, referring to their world, attaches the corresponding ideological labels associated with the nouns "left" and "right:"

Even the multi-national companies, who had no clue what their right-hand advisors or their left-wing allies were doing, followed the new economic directives.


BTW, here's Gaber's "Destra-Sinistra". Yes, the song that says that bathing in a tub is typically rightish and having a shower is typically leftish... and takes a peek at other Italian ideological stereotypes with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The result: a wonderful affectionate critique of both rightish and leftish stereotypes.

MENSCHEN, DIE NICHT ZWISCHEN RECHTS UND LINKS UNTERSCHEIDEN KÖNNEN

MENSCHEN, DIE NICHT WISSEN, WAS RECHTS UND LINKS IST
This is the Luther version of the Jonah reference to children and/or infidels as "persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left."
people who cannot tell their right hand from their left
Their ignorance is so great they “cannot tell their right hand from their left.” 
Luther says "rechts und links" in a more abstract sense.
Another German translation says "Menschen, die rechts und links nicht unterscheiden können."
Or "Menschen, die nicht einmal rechts und links unterscheiden können."
Or "Menschen, die nicht zwischen rechts und links unterscheiden können."

people who do not know

the difference between their right hand and their left,

ORDINARY GLOSS:

We can understand this with

regard to the age of infancy, which is innocent and simple, and

 the number of little ones is so great,

who, before doing penance, did not know the diference between good and evil. 

Again, in my Othello essay "The Rightful Left-tenant" (which can be found on this blog), I discuss this biblical reference and correlate it to the Japanese idiom "migi mo hidari mo wakaranai (右も左もわからない)." As well as to Cassio's left-right confusion (and it tells a lot about left-right symbolism in Othello, btw).
Luckily for me, I wore conveniently colour-coded Kickers as a child...

Kickers: green for right and red for left.

Wherein are more than six score thousand {persons), 

that are so young, and voide are of all {reason), 

that by no means they able are to learne, 

the right hand from the left, for to discerne ? 

Should I subvert so many infants too?

Earbuds are usually marked with the letters L and R. So you know which one goes where.

Knowledge of the left-right distinction is considered a sign of maturity: I myself learned the difference upon hitting puberty, i.e. that my left faces the right of what I see through my eyes and vice versa. Before that, I thought that the left was always the side of my writing hand and the two/three birthmarks on my forearm. One of the ways I learned real left-right distinction was through the clever use of colour-coded Kickers shoes: red for left and green for right. Thus, I learned that my left side faces the right side of others and vice versa. The gunshot on Lord Nelson's left shoulder at Trafalgar and my handedness and birthmarks, however, proved more influential in this aspect than the Kickers; from looking at depictions of the dying admiral, I realized that my right faced Horatio's (and everyone else's) left.