Enneagram Type 1 Perfectionist
bad-driving
The following is a blog written by Type 1: Perfectionist about his wife, Type 7: Enthusiast. People don’t often associate Type 1s with having a great sense of humor. Yet, this man is an award-winning copywriter and has been in the ad business for more years than he wishes to count. He and his wife are both in their mid-70s.You can see Type 1 fully in his telling of the following tale. Backing Up Is Hard To Do.My wife has a thorny problem with relations. The spatial ones. When she’s backing up a car, you never stand near it. Because wherever you’re standing, you’re in mortal danger. In the past few years, backing out of our garage, she has collided with four cars parked in our driveway and one innocently parked across from our house on the other side of the street.It’s as if she were backing up an articulated big-rig vehicle. To go left, you turn the steering wheel right, right? My wife does this in our Honda CRV. In all of these accidents, we have been very fortunate that all she hit was metal. Metal can be repaired or replaced. I shudder to think of what else she could have hit. Like children or animals. Her lack of spatial-relation skills may be hereditary. Because her sister just backed through a closed garage door. I can picture the medical profession recognizing this as a unique genetic condition: the “backing lacking syndrome.” But maybe it’s not hereditary. I mean, these accidents do require a willful disregard of the obvious.So to be more empathetic - to see it from her point of view - I mentally reproduce the scene. I open the kitchen door leading to the garage. I press the remotely operated garage door. I walk towards the street between our two garaged cars.Now I am outside the garage, facing the other car or cars hypothetically parked in the driveway. Next I turn and go to the left side of the CRV, open the driver’s door and get in. Obvious conclusion: My wife had to see any car parked in the driveway. And then in the next second forget about it (please don’t tell me it’s Alzheimer’s!) and swerve, backing into it! This could be the first case of Spatial Confusion complicated by Alzheimer’s? What will doctors call it? Dyslexic Dementia?