"The bane of left-handedness" (Mum, 2004)
 

Further to your recent advice regarding the downtrodden masses of "clumsy", "sinister" and "gauche" people, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I noted yesterday, whilst watching "The Muppets Christmas Carol" that the world-famous and extremely talented actor Kermit The Frog is, in fact, left-handed. Mr The Frog is clearly seen, in his character of Bob Cratchet, writing up the ledgers of the evil Ebenezer Scrooge whilst holding the quill in his left hand. He joins such amazing people as Albert Einstein, Paul McCartney, Michaelangelo, Alexander The Great and Josephine Martin in the world of the left-handed.

It concerns me, in this Twenty-First Century, that discrimination of left-handedness still persists. It is a mere 40 years since I had my hand tied behind my back by Sister Emerita in a vain attempt to make me write with my useless right hand, just like a "normal" child. We, unfortunately, live in a right-handed world and I believe that it is time that the plight of the left-handed student is given attention. Just try writing in a ring binder, with the rings in the way of your hand, making writing painful as well as difficult; or writing in the last half of an exercise book where the previously used pages form a hump which impedes your ability to write; or using ink where your hand moves over the just-written writing before the ink has a chance to dry creating huge smudges all over your page; or doing an exam where all the pages are stapled in the top left corner thereby making review and editing difficult; or writing on glossy paper which creates the same problem as using ink referred to above; or sitting in those miserable tutorial seats with a writing surface attached to the side on the right side.

Left-handed people suffer these difficulties every day of their lives! Of course we're bloody clumsy. WE'RE USING TOOLS AND SYSTEMS DESIGNED BY AND FOR THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE AUTOCRATIC RIGHT-HANDED PEOPLE OF THE WORLD.

For example:
Most can openers are designed for use exclusive by right-handed people. I was in my thirties before someone invented and marketed a standard can opener (i.e. the Magican) for use by all.
Many cutlery knives have serrations on the right side of the blade only, making it difficult for us to cut our meat as we have to twist the knife and cut in an unnatural posture.
Most proprietary medicine bottles have the instructions printed sideways on the label, in the direction that makes it immediately readable to right-handed people's natural way of picking it up. We lefties usually have to stand there with our wrists twisted around and distorted just so we can see how much cough medicine to take.
The curse of the lefties life - scissors!!! These have certainly been designed by Satan himself. The difficulties and pain associated with getting your fingers stuck in the hole that is made solely for a thumb turns what should be a simple task into a challenge. The damn things are built back-to-front.
Dressmaker's scissors are even worse. The curved blade which is designed to slide under the fabric and therefore make an exact cut (as required) is of course on the wrong side of the blade for we lefties. I have been sewing for thirty years and I still cannot cut fabric with a neat and exact seam allowance, which makes it impossible for the finished product to have a tailored look.
Using one of those buckets with the rollers to squeeze the excess water out - the metal slice that you stand on to hold the bucket down whilst you pull the mop up through the rollers is on the wrong side!!
Most irons are constructed with the power cord coming out of the right-hand side of the iron - so we lefties actual iron over the power cord, thereby reducing it's life and increasing the risk of electrocution.
Ironing boards are constructed for right-handed people. The bend in the legs which allows you to sit down while you iron is bowed, so that when we lefties have to turn the ironing board around so we can use it cannot lower it and sit down to iron as the bowed legs prevent us from getting close to the board, thereby requiring us to bend forward and curve our upper backs - leaving us in danger of developing a "widow's hump".
Saucepans with a "lip" for pouring the hot contents out into a colander or other such object have the lip positioned in accordance with the saucepan handle being held by a right-handed person. We lefties just burn ourselves!!
The numbers on a computer keyboard are on the right-hand side, which requires we poor lefties to enter digits with our non-dominant hand. This is a huge problem if you are doing any accounts-type work.
I could go on and on and on and on...........suffice to say it is an ABSOLUTE BITCH living in a right-handed world. LEFTIES OF THE WORLD UNITE!!! STAND UP AGAINST OUR OPPRESSORS AND SHOUT "I'M FED UP AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!! STOP PUTTING THE MECHANISM CONTROL ON OUR LAZY-BOY RECLINERS ON THE RIGHT SIDE - PUT IT ON THE LEFT SO WE CAN USE IT!!"

conform you lefty scum! :lol: j/k

Amen!

I particularly dislike those desks with the arm on the right side.
Also, i get pissed when people yell at me for how i hold a pencil. You hafta tweak your wrist all crooked and risk arthritis and carpal tunnel to write in a way which you can see what you are writing as it is being scribbled down. Otherwise you just gotta write and have faith that its correct when it comes out on the other side of your hand several words later.

Whiteboards.... i despise them. I gotta write wierd so that my hand doesn't just erase whatever i've written.

and lord knows the number of times i've turned in smeared essays...

amen to all that, but no complaints to this:
my right hand is fast at ten-key and it frees up my left hand for the mouse.
It is also good that the arrow keys are on the right side where they belong as my right hand almost never touches a mouse for more than five seconds and the whole extremely awkward 'a/s/d/w' thing (however that goes) for games never made sense to me personally.

the only thing my right hand is 'best at' is jump shots outside 10 feet, and that was due to no one teaching me to shoot with the proper hand when I was young. My right-handed layups are a complete disaster at best. I can write with both hands (akwardly and slowly but it sill works), but that took several months in 7th grade of just learning to hold a pencil and use it to a degree.

this one REALLY bugs me, and crops up on a nearly daily basis.
that was a pain during school, those make it difficult at best or impossible at worst to sit with any kind of correct posture.

It's funny that you bring this up right now. One of my best friends is a lefty and has always had difficulty doing things that would be easy for a righty. He's moving soon and because of this I thought it would be great to get him a bunch of left-handed stuff and had wondered if a real-life equivalent of 'The Leftorium' existed. A place to buy left-handed can openers and the like.
I've often tried to do basic tasks left-handed like writing, cutting food, opening cans or whatever to test my ambidexterity (is that even a word?).
It seems impossible for me to use any kind of tool with my left hand, it must suck to have no choice.

Pretty much the only thing I do with my left hand is write. I've learned in this predominantly right handed world to use it :) So I guess that makes me ambidextrious?

my choice has always been to use the hand with the most natural agility and ability unless I am absolutely forced to do otherwise.

I can write left to right with both hands.I am predominantly left handed,and I have never had a promlem using anything but scissors.you should see what I can do with my feet. : )

I have seen Thomas Jefferson's specially designed writing desk at Monticello where he would comfortably and simultaneously write Greek with the left hand and Latin with his right hand; sure makes me feel ignorant in some respects.

Lefties rule, righties drool..... ;)

Plus, wouldn't lefties be the only ones in their right mind?

I right handed but when it comes to chop sticks im a lefty. Im stuck in the middle what should I do!

My number pad skills are great with my right hand after so much practice.

Same with my right-hand mouse usage.

Same with my right-handed guitar.

Everything else? Left-handed. :D

My mom was left handed and she told me when she was little, her teacher(s) would use the meter stick and slap her hands (real hard) if they catch her writing with left hand, as a result, she writes right hand, and do everything else left handed.

Bah! thinking about just drives me crazy!!

I'm mostly left handed, except that i donkey punch with my right. Does that make me ambidextrous?

I'm only 29, and this happened to me too. I was never slapped with anything, but everytime I tried to write with my left hand I was told not to. Then they'd have the nerve to give me low grades when it came to handwriting. Gee, I wonder why the kid can't write correctly.

Now I do everything left handed, except write.

Grew up completly lefthanded, my right hand is just a helphand for the left. Scissors are the worst, it really hurts using a righthanded scissor in your left hand. It is almost impossible to get hold of real lefthand-adapted tools.. It is much easier getting handicap-adapted kitchen appliances..
Wish there was a "Leftorium" somewhere...

I feel your pain lefty here also

I was a born a lefty... My dad was born a lefty... My grandfather (mother's side) was a lefty too... The leftiness is strong in this one, yes!

(un?)fortunately I've had the lefty almost completely beat out of me by a nazi of a teacher who would give me awful grades for poor handwriting, and parents who would spend lots of time and energy to "cure" me. And they were thorough about it - not just handwriting, but everything else too - if they saw me using kitchen utensils with my left hand, they would switch it to my right hand. I was too little to protest.

Now my left hand can't write, and I prefer to use my right hand as "dominant". All I know is - I won't repeat the same ignorant mistake with my own kids, if they turn out lefties.

Being left handed, MANY of the things above are true.

But the biggest problem I have to this day are SISCORS!

Damn them to hell!

My brother is left handed. The overly conservative church we went to stated that being left handed was wrong. He forced my brother to write and do everything with his right hand. My bro now uses his right hand for everything. However, his hand writing is horrible. To bad he can't unlearn this idiotic thing our father did to him in the name of religion.

Im a lefty too.

It was the evil nuns that tried to make me a rightie-- I write with my right hand, I do everyting else with my left - -but my handwriting is atrocious - I shoudl try to go back to left.

Though I do play golf right handed - it was extremely difficult to find lessons for a leftie. My game might improve though if I go to my dominant side, who knows...

I write left handed. Everything else I tried with my left, couldn't find equipment or was correct and I do everything esle with my right hand.

I figured it was easier to adapt than to fight it.

I once read that we lefties tend to die a few years earlier on average than the righties because of our "clumsiness" and the stress related to having to conform to a world built for right-handed people. We need a Ned Flanders to open a Leftorium for us.

I never bothered to google it....

I did recall a long time ago in San Diego going to a left handed store...

http://thelefthand.com/

Keyboard, camera, scissors, pruners, spiral notebooks.... Crayola Tub Tints???

Lefty's do it better.


I'm a righty.

A lifetime lefty here also! Those damn right-handed desks cause me to 'learn' to write upside down. You had to twist around in those desks and that put my left hand at the top of the desk. I learned to cope with it but it sucks.

Leftys rock!

I hated the right handed desks. It's no wonder I have back problems to this day. I spent years twisting just a little bit so I could keep my writing on the table. I am an odd-ball lefty too. I write, throw, swing a tennis racket, bitch slap, and eat with my left. However, I also hit a baseball and golf with my right. Haven't figured that one out yet......LEFTIES RULE!!!!

Lefty here!!!! The only one in my family, so teaching me to do things as a kid like tie shoelaces or cut meat was difficult and I couldn't teach MY own kids as they are both righties. Luckily, I was never really ostrasized in school for it-I learned to adapt. Artwork was always done from right to left( even now, my teachers at first think I'm doing something wrong until my 'difference' is pointed out). Taking notes, both then and now are done from the back of the notebook moving frontward. I write backwards very well with my right hand and I use it exclusively for the mouse and calculator. As for can-openers and the like, electric is digit-neutral for the most part. But measuring cups? I have to turn them 'backwards' or read the numbers from the inside of the glass.
(side note-my grandmother was always telling my parents to make me use my right hand-for all their strictness and old-fashioned ways, I have to say to mom and dad, LEFT ON!)

I hated the right handed desks. It's no wonder I have back problems to this day. I spent years twisting just a little bit so I could keep my writing on the table. I am an odd-ball lefty too. I write, throw, swing a tennis racket, bitch slap, and eat with my left. However, I also hit a baseball and golf with my right. Haven't figured that one out yet......LEFTIES RULE!!!!

Why is it that all the people who were forced to do things right-handed came from religious upbringings and schools?

Both of my parents were left-handed and teachers, so I am made in the shade. But my sister is "different". I think she was adopted.
I use a mouse right hand, scissors right hand, and masturbate with the right hand. "wanna shake hands?"
At the club where I do personal training, usually about a third of the trainers are left-handed. One coworker suggests that is because lefties are better at large motor skills. Which helps explain why so many athletes are left-handed. I think it is because we work in an unconventional job and we are unconventional.

I can use my mouse with both hands equally.
I bat right handed
I play guitar right handed.
I jerk off right handed (mostly)
I punch and kick strongest from the left.
I write left handed.


Lefties need to adapt and force themselves to learn some right handed stuff. I'm capable of learning something either way, I naturally prefer the left tho. Desks at school sucked, scissors aren't so bad now, but I still hate felt tip pens..you get the black smear on the back of you hand. It's better to force yourself to use both hands IMO. You never know when you'll break your dominant hand and then be clumsy as hell trying trying to use you "dumb" hand. I personally believe it can help in older age with diseases like Alzheimers, since you create more neural pathways the more you develop your motor skills. It makes sense to me since the hands are considered "the visible part of the brain".

Gee, put any race or religion in place of 'lefties' and 'right-handed stuff' and you'd be called a bigot.....just an observation.

Do do just about everything left handed. About the only things I do RH is use the mouse and 10-key.

I hated those RH desks. Every once in a while I'd find a LH desk in college. Those were the shit but there were never enough.

No, because I consider myself primarily a lefty, which allows me to talk shit about my race and what we should do. Ask Bill Cosby, He'll tell ya. ;)

If I remember correctly, the trait or whatever for "leftiness" is dominant. So it's not surprising that leftiness would run in the family.

I am left-handed. I don't ever find it a problem, really. Not since I had tech drawing lectures in 1st year college.

I found it good to be left-handed, in fencing it's a big help and the equipment is readily available for both hands.

In my life, left-handedness has been such a non-issue, I often wonder about the advocacy and whether or not it's a waste of time.

I am a lefty also.

I make everyone at work mad because I am constantly moving the mouse to the left side of the computer.