Next on the Bucket List: The Down Under

I was listening to the radio last night on my way to basketball (there wasn't anything situationally-appropriate to play, so I shamelessly listed to NPR) and it was all about homing pigeons.  In summary, they don't know how pigeons always manage to return home (even sedated during the trip out, they still make it back), but they think it has something to do with a "built-in compass."  Apparently, pigeons aren't the only creatures with this sort of auto-nav.  An Aboriginal community, the Prompuraaw, has a language that is largely impacted by 16 different words for cardinal directions.  Instead of saying "How are you" as a greeting, the typical question is, "Where are you going?" and a typical response would be, "Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." Literally, they always know where they were heading.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about my own sense of cardinality.  Ever since I can remember, I've been confused by north and south.  Not in a "I can't tell my way around town" sort of confusion—in fact, I always know which direction I'm going.  But I always think north is south and east is west.  It's really easy to fix when giving directions, for example, because I just reverse my intuition and it's all smooth sailing.  But this radio program made me wonder if, perhaps, my internal sense of direction really was correct, I was merely living in the wrong hemisphere.  Needless to say, I added "visit the southern hemisphere" to my bucket list (anyone up for a trip to Sydney?).

But there's another interesting phenomenon that has been troubling me lately.  Whenever I think of a dream or a memory, I always think in 3rd person.  When I remember my brother and I rolling down the stairs on our stomachs as a kid, I don't feel the stairs hit my stomach, I watch happily from a distance.  When I'm running from a killer witch in a nightmare, I don't look down at my feet and wonder why they won't move, I watch myself from a distance, trying to will myself to run.  

It's not really a problem (it has gotten me into trouble a couple of times...like when, as an 18-year old at the family dinner table, I "remembered" my parents wedding), but it does concern me because this implies that none of my memories are actually real.

What does that even mean?