A gauche, sinister thread for us southpaws

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just read an interesting article about the science of left-handedness, which I’ll post below. Apparently there is a genetic component to left-handedness which may also mean good things, like better recovery from strokes because we use both sides of our cortex for certain qualities like speech, unlike righties. And bad things, like higher incidences of IBS.

So I thought this might be a good reason to start a left-hand thread where we can share our experiences of growing up and existing as a left-handed person in a right-handed world.

Fun fact: I married a leftie, and both of our kids are lefties.

Growing up, I didn’t have much trouble adapting as a leftie. I used right-handed scissors, I think because there was only one pair of left-handed scissors in the whole classroom that could never be found, so I adapted. The worst part was writing in pencil-- my hand passing over what I just wrote, smearing it, and the side of my hand was always darkened with graphite.

Companies that design products that can only be used by righties have always pissed me off (Logitech has been notorious for that-- designing computer mice that only conform to a right hand). But I learned to use a mouse on the right as well as a left-sided one due to being a former sysadmin who needed to do things on other’s computers. I have both left and right mice on my workstation computer.

I’m ambidextrous with a couple things other than computer mice. I can bowl (equally badly) with my left or right hands. Shooting a pistol feels equally comfortable in either hand.

I’m artistic, which I’ve always kind of thought came at least partially from being left-handed (though I know plenty of artistic people are right-handed). I always notice when a character in a movie or TV show writes with their left hand, and call out “leftie!” to my wife.

General fun facts: left-handedness has a negative connotation through history; thus the title references ‘sinister’ and ‘gauche’ originally meaning ‘left’; also ‘left-handed compliment’. A disproportionate number of U.S. Presidents have been southpaws.

2

The traditional greeting as we know it today is believed to have come from when people used to use swords for fighting.

People would carry them in a case, called a scabbard, on their left side.

This meant they could draw their sword with their right hand, if it was needed.
Shaking hands, which is traditionally done with your right hand, became a friendly greeting because it was proof that you came in peace and weren’t holding a weapon.
It was also a sign of trust that you believed the other person wasn’t going to take their sword out to fight you either!

AIso I knew a guy who was born in the 20s or 30s. His teachers forced him to write with his right hand and would tie his left hand at his side. His handwriting was quite illegible for his entire life.

3

My mother is a natural leftie – the rest of the family are all righties – but has become so proficient with the other hand that you’d never know it.

4

I married a lefty, but all of our dogs have been ambidextrous.

5

I’m right handed, but have tried learning chopstick use left handed. Difficult!

6

Difficult enough in your dominant hand!

Hmm, no lefties themselves have weighed in yet (unless @lobotomyboy63 is a lefty, he didn’t make clear if he’s one himself or just sharing leftie info). I know only 10% of the general population is left-handed, but since both lefties and Dopers are so smart and talented, I figured the Venn diagram intersection of the two would be quite a bit higher :wink:

7

Practice. I have primarily used chopsticks for eating (and cooking to a lesser degree) for most of my adult life. I forget now why I started.

8

That might actually be a decent poll. I’m sure we’ve had one before, but it might be fun to do a new one.

I’m not a lefty, though. Would that make me a righty? I don’t hear that word very often.

9

I use chopsticks a lot as well (though not primarily, mostly with Asian food, to which chopsticks do seem better suited than Western implements- try picking up a single grain of rice with a fork). I just tried with my right hand, using two pens as stand-ins, and I’m surprisingly a lot more dexterous than I thought I’d be.

10

Not a bad thought. Maybe I’ll get around to making one later.

Can I add a poll to this existing thread?

11

I’m a righty, but my nephew is a lefty. He went to the Art Institute for awhile, but didn’t finish a degree. He said he went into a drawing class and immediately noticed that virtually 100% of the students were left-handed.

12

Yep, as I said in my OP, I’ve always thought lefties had more of a tendency to be artistic. The old explanation was that the right side of the brain was more creative and the left more analytical, so since lefties were right-brained (due to a nerve crossover in the neck area, I think) they were more about art and creativity and less about math and logic. But I think the left brain / right-brain thing has been at least somewhat discredited.

13

You can, but it would go in the post where you added it, so it wouldn’t be at the top, and the title wouldn’t tell anyone there’s a poll. So I’d suggest a new thread.

I thought you might want to make one, which is why I didn’t make one myself.

14

My adaptation to the “smearing” issue when writing with a pencil or smearable types of ink pen was to write very small, with the words up above where my hand would drag, and in fact all but my pinky finger are clasped around the pen barrel, and only the base (metacarpal, part that’s embedded in the palm of the hand) of that finger, nothing else, is sliding against the paper.

I print, rather than write, (for the most part), and I have a quite legible print that’s the equivalent of 9 point type. At least until my hands get tired because I’m not used to it any more, I type all the time nowadays.

15

Good to finally hear from a fellow southpaw, @AHunter3! Interesting adaptation to the smearing while writing issue, though it does sound tiring to keep up for very long. You must have suffered from a lot of hand-cramping as a kid.

16

Despite being right handed, one of my brothers bats left handed in baseball and plays golf left handed. Being an older brother, I could let my younger brother do something I couldn’t do. So I started practicing batting left handed too. A family down the street built a batting cage in a barn, I would practice 4 to 8 hours a week hitting from both sides of the plate. Later I played at a bit higher level of softball than the rec leagues, being a switch hitter was nice. In one game, hit 2 grand slam homeruns, one from each side of the plate.

17

Not a southpaw myself, but my younger left-handed brother once vividly illustrated the power of “reverting to nature” (or whatever it’s called): He had trained himself to play computer games using his right hand to control the mouse, but if his character were truly in danger of being devoured by the monster or zombies, he would suddenly switch over to the left hand - because in times of crisis, people always revert to what is truly natural.

18

I can see learning to bat left-handed as a rightie, since I think it confers strategic advantage in the game. But golfing left-handed? I went through a phase where I had to quickly learn to golf (got hired at a company that had regular golf outings as a department-client bonding thing) and finding a decent set of used left-handed clubs was not easy.

I started learning to play guitar relatively late in life (27) and made a conscious choice to learn right-handed because I didn’t want to rely on a left-handed guitar or a right-handed guitar strung left-handed-- I wanted to be able to pick up any old guitar lying around and play it in any circumstance. I got to be an OK player, but never rose above a certain level, and I sometimes wonder if I would have become a better player if I did go left-handed.

19

In my early 20s, just after the collapse of communism, I visited my ancestors’ village in Hungary. I was taking notes in the town hall and a matronly clerk took the pencil out of my left hand and put it in my right hand. I laughed in disbelief at the ignorance.

So glad to have been born in a place and time where no one forced that on me.

20

Lefty here. Im 64 and remember learning to write and my teacher forcing me to use my right hand. I must have rebelled because I also remember a discussion with my parents and a note from my teacher. I guess they worked it out because I’ve always written left-handed.

I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous though. Sorry, I like that joke.

I actually do a fair number of things right-handed, but nothing skill related.