left_handed Dosquatch I am left_handed. In some ways, it's cool. It's like belonging to a secret society. You can't join, you have to be born into it. You can't tell that I belong to this private little club unless you bother to notice when I write, or eat, or play guitar. Other left_handed people tend to notice more than right_handed people. "Oh, you're a lefty?" with a knowing nod. And then we exchange the secret handshake, and laugh about orgy night at the lodge. Oops, forget I said that. Through much of history, being left_handed was considered being broken, or worse, posessed. Left_handed children were often "cured" by tying their left arms to their side until they became acceptably proficient with their right hands. Language reflects this bias. Fine motor skill with the hands is called "dexterity". The root word, "dexter", is Latin for right_handed. Curiously, "ambidextrous" means "right_handed on both sides". The Latin for "left_handed" is "sinister". I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out the implications. The French for left is "gauche", which also means clumsy. The Old Saxon "lyft" also meant "worthless". A large portion of the world has stopped trying to "cure" left_handedness. This is a good thing. Forcing a left_handed child to be right_handed is traumatizing and frustrating, and it can lead to numerous learning disabilities, including dyslexia. Frankly, it is frustrating enough being left_handed without attempts to fix us. The world is set up for right_handed people. Desks in school don't support your writing hand, so your arm gets tired, and the teachers don't care. Any language written from left to right means that (when you orient your piece of paper as you're instructed) your fingers drag through what you've just written, meaning you can't see what you've written plus you're smudging your words as you go. In spite of this, teachers are more than happy to pick on your handwriting. Scissors don't cut right, and if you're lucky enough to find a left_handed pair of scissors, they're usually made as an "oh, fine" gesture by the scissors company and are of crap quality. Spiral notebooks eat your fingers alive. Anything "ergonomically sculpted for more comfort and less stress" means "impossible to use correctly". Think mice and joysticks as an example. If you do find something that's truly made for a left_handed person, that's of good quality and isn't just offered as an afterthought, you have to pay twice as much for it. Think baseball gloves and golf clubs. Still, even with the drawbacks, I wouldn't change. Being left_handed makes me a little bit special, a little bit different, and that's something that we all need. 040529 ... dosquatch So, who here is left_handed? 040529 ... Piso Mojado i am 040529 ... Piso Mojado ahh, the dreaded spiral notebooks! i used to flip every other page up side down to avoid pain while taking notes in class 040529 ... falling_alone so far, at least ten people at work have asked "oh, are you left-handed?" yes.... someone else was really interested and asked if i ate with my left-hand as well...which i do but- does it matter? trying to use pencil/charcoal/pastel/wet paint for art is a bitch too. 040529 ... falling_alone heh. i flip my notebooks upside down at times 040529 ... puredream My coolest artwork is done with my left handed. But my right is dominant. I think my left hand has many things it would like to say... 040615 ... oldephebe Spiral Notebooks and being left handed i get that 040615 ... luminesence it is like you are cheating on yourself 040616 ... stork daddy i too cannot eat next to most people at a restaurant. 040616 ... dosquatch Brother! I didn't even mention that, did I? Yep, table seating order becomes important, lest you spend the entire meal engaged in an elbow war. Did you know that studies indicate that lefties tend to be ambidextrious more often than righties? 040616 ... mood ring nope. but have you heard the thing where left handed people are the only ones in their right minds? anyways, i remember one time that i was eating at my grandmas house with my little lefthanded cousin, and of the whole elbow thing. but the whole time i was envying her cuz she was special. but she wasnt special, just different. and goddammed annoying to eat with. 040616 ... seventeen paste! 040617 ... oE i had to learn to eat with my right hand because, coming from a large family there was only so much elbow room at the table..i just switched hands one day when i was 4 or 5. ... 040701 ... jane elton 071120 ... unhinged i'm obviously right_brained so i should have been, but my mother is convinced it's because she is left_handed and babies learn from mirror images. so i learned to use my right hand from watching her use her left hand...? i remember taking a test in the eighth grade that told you what quadrant of your brain you used most. mine was the right but i can't remember if it was front or back. i think it was front *shrugs* the violin isn't like the guitar. it doesn't matter whether you're left_handed or not; everyone holds the violin with their left hand and the bow with their right. probably because if it wasn't standardized like that, orchestra would be pretty dangerous. 071120 ... BnB heh, I'm a lefty. :) I never thought it was a big deal until I reached around 5th grade or so when someone noticed it. (I think they only noticed it because I fell and broke my left arm, so I had to write with my right hand until my left arm healed.) Until that time, I simply thought everyone wrote like me. I never noticed any problems with writing, probably because I never used pens (well, not seriously anyway, and I still don't.) I don't remember having any problems with it... probably because all the desks that I used (up until college) were flat and supported both my arms. I guess I was lucky. Anyway, I wouldn't trade being left handed for anything, since I love writing with my left hand. I also love the feeling that I learned how to write slightly differently then most people. Recently, however, I began to write with my right hand. I'm getting pretty good at it too. I've also begun to alternate what hand I do what with (I'm not totally left handed... I tend to use my mouse with my right hand, for example..) Still, switching hands has not become totally natural yet. Maybe, one day I will become truly ambidextrous. :) 090222 ... jane i think i was one of those kids that was born left_handed but ended up right_handed and semi-ambidextrous. i play pool left-handed. (can i be a part of the club?) 090223 ... unhinged i was trained as a child to let my mother sit at the seat where her left elbow would not be whacking the person she was sitting next to when we went out to eat. the last time i was home and we went out, i scanned the booth, and sat on the opposite side from where she would need to sit. her purse also inevitably gets in the way and most of the time i like my own space. (she also has a tendency to get all touchy feely especially since she doesn't see me often.) 090223 ... arwyn I had a teacher, first grade, Mrs. Springborn, who tried to make me right handed. My mother flipped out on her and she stopped, and I've been a lefty ever since, but the cool thing is I'm now ambidextrous. My favourite parlor trick is to write my name with both hands at the same time. Little kids love it. 181105 what's it to you? who go blather from