Blaming it on the Beach Boys

I have something embarrassing to admit. It's one of those little quirky brain funks you can't seem to get over. But before I admit this, I feel it is necessary to inform you of two things:
1) I have no sense of direction.
2) I graduated high school and college with great GPAs, and I was in an honor society all through both.

Now that you have those two important pieces of information, I'll reveal to you my brain quirk:
I get the East coast and the West coast mixed up. Not that I think Boston and the Carolinas are on the left side of the country if you're looking at a map, or that California sits to the north of Florida -- no. I always want to call California the East coast. Which in turn makes me think for a moment that Boston, the Carolinas, D.C. and everything else on that coast make up the West coast.

But the good part of all of this is that it's not my fault, because I know where the confusion came from, and it happened at a very early age.

I'm sure you've all heard the Beach Boys' song "California Girls." And if you have, you know the very first line: "Well East coast girls are hip, I really dig those styles they wear ..." See, I just tuned out the rest of the song after that line until the chorus: "I wish they all could be California girls ..."

So my terrible sense of direction -- particularly with identifying the coasts -- can and will be blamed entirely on the Beach Boys.