@Valka D'Ur
A famous sci-fi author backed my point up yesterday
Source, please. Which author?
I can relate to the part about the concert pianist, somewhat. The only way I made it through the Western Board of Music exams was to train my hands, fingers, and feet to know exactly what to do at every moment throughout, no matter if it was a scale, arpeggio, or Bach. Since I learned to play by ear many years before I learned to read music, I've preferred not to rely on sheet music for a crutch in case I lose my place.
This meant hours each day of practice and intense concentration, and it drove my family nuts; I couldn't stand to have any extraneous noise around - not TV, radio, or conversation. It was a case of making the keyboard and pedalboard extensions of myself, and it was an amazing feeling when everything came together.
But if it's true that drivers go from point A to point B and have no memory of anything road/driving-related in between, why would people keep asking me how many traffic lights were between their starting point and my place when I was giving them directions? Why ask, if they don't notice them?
Traffic lights aren't anything I notice unless I have to cross a street and there's a light on that corner. If I'm giving directions to get here, and they're starting out from downtown or farther south, I'll give them a few landmarks, and at one point there is the invariable question that comes when I tell them to head north at a particular intersection (where a popular hamburger place is located): "Which way is north?"
Um... it's the opposite of south. Depending on the time of day, the Sun is either to the left or to the right. It's not like there are any tall buildings there that block out the view of the Sun, so how can people not be able to figure these things out? Don't they teach basic map-reading anymore?
Don't ask me about how many traffic lights there are between Point A and Point B. I've never needed to know that, so it's not something I ever bothered to memorize. My concern with traffic lights is whether or not I can make it across in time, because whoever programmed those things didn't bother accounting for people with reduced mobility (a point brought up by a former city councilor, who informed his clueless colleagues that it really wouldn't be good for seniors and disabled people to get run over because of not having enough time to cross a street).