I am a left handed person and, at times, it feels like I'm on exhibit in a zoo. I am amazed by all those who instantly see I'm left handed. Who really notices that on a daily basis? I'm left handed and I don't do that. I've been left handed all my life and I've gotten used to the drawbacks, also two out of three of my kids are left handed so, we rule in the house!
I've had people say some really outrageous things about me being left handed. (mostly religious and mostly having to do with the devil) Then, I also have long involved stories from others who are lefties or those who had a relative who was a leftie.
I sympathize with those older folks who were forced to use their right hands. It wasn't necessarily as evil as it seems. Imagine being a teacher in a one room school room and the hand writing instructions don't even have a version for lefties. This was the educational standard, the hand writing they were expected to teach, what everyone was expected to learn to do. So, what to do with these outliers? Make them conform. The bigger question was, why didn't they make a version for lefties?
The word "left" means "sinister". Not a promising beginning is it? When you go home to heaven Jesus is sitting on the RIGHT side of GOD. The Bible is filled with everything good being on the right, everything bad on the left. God fearing folks didn't want anything in their life that smacked of evil so no one wanted a left handed kid. There's some stories about people wiping their butt with the left hand, thus shaking hands with people was always done with the right. (It's a old wife's tale people tell me).
Being a leftie in a right handed world is sometimes hard. Potato peelers are sometimes impossible to use. While Fiskars scissors are a godsend because they are for both lefties and righties, good scissors (sewing scissors) are definitely left or right handed.
Trying to play an instrument is confusing to me. If you string a guitar for lefties, the chording is with your right hand and, it seems like that should take more dexterity than strumming, but maybe I'm wrong.
Sometimes the silliest thing can trip you up. Ladles with a pour spout, for example, really tripped me up once at a salad bar.
My horror story has to do with a calligraphy class before there were felt tip pens and I had to use the old dip pens. The ink was wet, and you had to write (in English) left to right, thus smearing the ink. My solution was to learn to write down the page, making all my letters sideways. It's easy to skip a letter that way and I can't tell you how many times I had to start over on a project. I admit that, after starting over 5 times, I might have just decided to take the hit on a misspelled word from time to time.
So, here I am, writing names on parasols in wet paint. Sounds like my old nightmare of a class all over again doesn't it?
