July 01, 2004

• Left Handed people are naturally smarter, stronger, better-looking, and more creative than everybody else. Its a fact.
• That's a great resource, Gyan. Thanks! My seven-year-old son is (mostly) left-handed. He writes and eats with his left hand, but shoots right in hockey and swings right in golf. He favours his left foot in soccer and throws left in baseball. Personally, I don't understand how people like him can have a mix of right-handed and left-handed tendencies, since I do everything with my right hand (yes, everything). I never realized how many items are set up for righties, and how tough it must be for lefties to perform basic tasks. On the bright side...as a lefty, once I teach him to throw a cut fastball, he'll be set for life.
• Lefties tend to have a mixture of handedness. Part of it is being deft and part is just adaptation. I left handed with writing and eating, and right handed with just about everything else. I never played much in the way of sports, but I am not sure which handed I am with a baseball bat; both stances feel awkaward. I can also write backwards and upside down, and I have always been able to, which is apparently not uncommon. There is a streak of lefties on both sides of my family, and the creativity that I see ascribed to left-handedness often just seems to me like having to survive in a right handed world. I have trouble with left-handed scissors and notebooks, but I had just as much trouble with the same right handed things growing up. The one I cant figure out is this: I write on a blackboard with my right hand. Only with chalk, with a whiteboard and markers I am left handed.
• I have long held a theory that "non-normal" attributes a person may have, such as left handedness (and many, many others), contribute to one of three outcomes (1) Unusual submission and conformity (2) Unusual creativity (3) Self destruction.
• I'm left handed, play most sports right handed, mainly because i was never good enough at them to make much difference, eat left handed, use tools left handed, compute with mouse on the right. I think that left handed people are much better at using their right hand than righties are their left. I've seen right handed people totally useless in a situation where it was easier to use a tool with their left. Being Right-Handed: detriment or curse?
• My Dad is left-handed and I am ambi-dextrous (i don't have a preferred starting leg, I can pass left-handed as well as right-handed and I can write with both hands). there's my useless piece of personal trivia for the day.
• I think that lefties tend to have a mix of handedness just out of the need to adapt to the world around them. Most tools and gadgets are right-handed, and even the ones designed especially for lefties often don't work very well. I've heard a couple of explanations for the lower life expectancy issue: first, many people in older generations were forced to use their right hand in lieu of their left (my grandfather, for example) so it's theoretically possible that lefties are simply underreported. Second, and a bit more worryingly, I've heard that lefties, when facing a head-on collision, tend to veer to their left, bringing them (in places where cars drive on the right side of the road) directly into oncoming traffic. I can't vouch for this personally, as I've never had to avoid a head-on collision, but when in an analagous scenario walking on a crowded sidewalk, I tend to step to the left.
• Come to think of it, i have been in a head on collision, and i veered to the left to try to avoid it...thus explaining which i was hit by both cars in the oncoming lane! I'm very left handed, except when it comes to using scissors, but that i think is because left handed scissors were unheard of when i was growing up. As a child the grandparents tried to make me change to become righthanded (some strange traditional belief in west africa that being left handed is inherently evil) so i was forever being smacked anytime i reached out with my left hand. It is also considered a sign of disrespect to give/receive anything with the left hand (something to do with the left hand being used for unsanitary purposes) so imagine my confusion. I started writing with my right hand BUT every word came out as a mirror image. To this day when i pick up a pen with the right hand i automatically start writing back to front! Thankfully my parents realized what was happening and encouraged me to use my left.
• I am also (mainly) left handed, I wonder how many of us there are on MoFi? I always felt that the main reason I'm not totally left handed is because I learned most things from a right handed perspective and it was easier to just copy what I saw. I have a lot of trouble with left and right directions but am almost perfect identifing cardinal directions no matter where I am.
• Heh. I've always had trouble following directions (turning left instead of right, etc.) but I never made the correlation that it was due to my being lefthanded. And I can't tie my shoes the same way everyone else does. But I have no problem doing any righthanded thing backward without thinking about it. However, whenever someone mentions that I'm doing it "weird", then I stumble and have trouble.
• Ah, why can't everyone in every particular be just like ME? /sarcasm
• I had dinner once with a group of coworkers and people from the agency and it turned out eight of us were lefties and there was one righty. It was good to be in the majority for once. None of the lefties remember being in a situation like that before. Also, at school I never encountered a lefty desk until late in my college career. By then I had gotten used to keeping my notebook on my lap. I had it better than my grandfather who was beaten by the nuns with a ruler for writing with his left hand. He ended up unable to write legibly with either hand.
• Great post Gyan. And I love lkc's and Ramix's writing habits/adaptations. I'm a righty with a mix of handedness from years of piano and violin. My left hand is stronger, but my right is more precise. It's about 50/50 right/left when I reach for an object. Weird thing is I use keys or open locks with my left.
• Shinything: I am totally the opposite, my right side is stronger: hand, arms, and back, but i have more control with my left. I am also better with my write than most righties with their left. I use a mouse with either hand (actually I have a tablet on my left side, with a mouse option, and a regular mouse on the right side, I use both equally). And I hate driving, so hopefully i wont veer into traffic anytime soon. I have had a few weird occurances of being at tables with all or mostly lefties, but growing up my family always had to sit in certain relative positions to each other so that we wouldnt bump elbows at the dinner table. And I was born two days after (and 14 years before) left handers day.
• (1) Unusual submission and conformity (2) Unusual creativity (3) Self destruction. Yay, I got three of three. What do I win? Seriously. I'm left handed but do most things that don't require precision with the right hand (adaption I guess). And curiously, ambrosia, I was almost on a head-on collision but instinctively turned right in the last second and saved my ass. Guess I'm gonna live long if I never decide to go driving on England or one of those wacky islands in the South Pacific.
• FTR, I'm almost completely left-handed. Except for the mouse. I've adapted to that.
• I'm right handed, but I putt left and I'm goofy-footed. I can write legibly with my left hand too, though it looks like a completely different person's handwriting.
• I'm the only left-handed person in 3 generations and my brothers have long subscribed to the brain damage explanation. My one obstinacy is those obnoxious tablet chairs in schools/university. I refuse to scrunch up and try to use a right-handed one, twisting my neck, etc. The one benefit is that using left-handed ones almost always guarantees you an aisle seat for quick get-aways at the bell. And it took 4 people to teach me to knit, because they all tried to reverse engineer "left handed knitting" (as righties), until I eventually pointed out that I didn't care and did in fact have a functional right hand.
• My God, they're everywhere! Ugh, ugh, get OFF, you vile, left-handed freaks! As a child, I was always very disappointed that I wasn't left-handed. Seriously. I'd hear about all the traits that lefties are supposed to have, and think, "That's soooo me! Why am I a boring right-hander?" (I didn't actually think "soooo", obviously; I hadn't seen Friends at that age.) I would get sligfhtly jealous of left-handed people I knew. I'd try to become at the very least ambidextrous, but my left hand stubbornly remained an essentially useless, floppy appendage - little more than some kind of vestigal fin-thing. It all annoyed me greatly in my younger years; the desire to be non-conformist is a terrible burden, you know... :-)
• As a lefty I never really got the left-handed scissors thing. I mean, regular scissors seem to work just fine for me. I also never saw the need for a left handed manual can opener. As far as right handed desks go, I'm 6ft. 4 so I was always more occupied with trying not to bang my knees than if I had to write weird.
• Most manual tasks left, including writing; scissors right, notable because I sew a lot; in piano the right is better (you'd think I would be great at harmony/bass, but no); everything else is a mishmash. My dad encouraged me to bat left-handed as a kid, though, because he thought it was cool. Lefties were harder to pitch against, or something. I switch the mouse around every couple of months to keep the strain off my wrists. Besides, it's kind of fun to throw people off when they try to use my computer. ("Oh no! The buttons are backwards!" "Mwahahahaha!") And as a teenager I taught myself to write mirrored because I thought it was neat. I was kind of bored back then. As for mystical/intelligent advantages being ascribed to it - eh. Every group that can draw a line around itself will eventually convince itself that it's superior to everybody outside the line. Though I can imagine a difference due to some sort of brain connectivity, sweeping statements like "We're all GENIUSES, except the ones who aren't and we won't mention those" tend to give me the edge-away-and-pretend-you-aren't-one-of-them reaction.
• I'm left-handed in writing, eating, and playing pool, although I can do 2 and 3 right-handed with moderate penalty. Just about everything else I do right-handed. Throwing, batting, playing guitar, cutting, scissors-ing. I do a fair amount of cooking, and most of it is right-handed (pouring, chopping, kneading), although I do tend to stir pots left-handed. And I definitely encountered more left-handed people in college (one of those ivy-covered New England beasts) than anyplace else, although some of the older lecture halls had no left-handed desks (not even at the left end of a row! how rude!), which was annoying. What's odd is that, when playing guitar, my right hand is pretty well useless (I can't fingerpick worth a damn), while my left hand is fairly precise and strong. While playing piano, however, it's entirely the opposite: left hand is entirely worthless. You'd think there'd be some sort of connection there.
• dj! how cool! ambidextrous. yowsa. i've always been fascinated by that. i wonder what percentage of people are ambi? you should start an "AMBI POWER" group. heh.
• I'm left-handed, but I play the guitar right-handed. Badly.
• Almost 100% lefty. I bat left handed, but I golf right handed for some reason.
• speaking of batting, pyrrthon, maybe you'd know the answer to this: in major-league play, can a switch-hitter switch from right to left and back again during the same at-bat? anybody?
• I am a lefty with the unusual situation of having been raised in a family of left-handed people. of the 5 of us (2 p's, 3 kids) only left-handers. so I never felt a stigma and had minimal "encouragement" to learn to do things w/my right hand. however, I was required to learn baton twirling and violin with my right hand, for safety reasons if nothing else! *bonk!*
• I do the same thing Wurwilf does- switching the mouse back and forth to save my wrists (tho not surfing the net as much would probably do more in that regard...) It always upsets righties who sit at my desk. Hugely. Which I always find amusing, given that most righties are oblivious to how much the world is set up for them. The one I find annoying is transit turnstiles- I'd prefer to swipe my card with my left hand, but that means reaching all the way across my body, which always feels awkward. grrrr.
• I play the guitar right-handed. Badly. Hey, Blaise, that's nuttin. I play the piano with both hands. Badly.* Anyway, I'm the rightie in a family that includes about the same number of lefties. The kids are 50/50 lefties, and and the SO has the same deal going in his family. My take? I think the lefties are a bit more ... strange ...than the rest of us. Not that we righties aren't a bit skewed--possibly to the left. (*and why I said that I don't know)
• Right-handed, but can draw with either hand, which I ascribe to practise.