Ha, "laterally challenged" was a new and fantastic label, I'll try to apply that to myself whenever I get left and right wrong.

It's an interesting problem though, I have excellent sense of direction and I'm good at 3D visualization and map reading. I don't get the directions wrong, I get the words for the directions wrong.

I can happily point the left, know we should go to the left, and say "let's go right!"

So it's probably a very different problem from, say, people who lack sense of direction, my problem is more like extremely narrow aphasia. I don't know of anyone who confuses up and down in the same manner though, it's interesting that it's just left and right, and that it's not that uncommon!