I’m the only one at my shop who can cut glass left and right handed. We have one other south paw, but he can’t cut right handed.
I’m definitely left hand dominate. Sure, there are some things I can do with my right hand but I’m pretty much total lefty. In the first grade my teacher told my parents I needed to be taught to write right handed. This did not set well with my left handed father, so it didn’t happen. However, she did nothing to teach me about holding a pencil, so I have the classic lefty hook.
Funny thing. I always kinda resented her. When I graduated from college, there was a writeup of it in my hometown paper (small town papers will print anything!). She saw it and called my folks house. I just happened to be there then and talked with her. She called to congratulate me on my graduation. Heh. She was about 80 at the time and had been retired from teaching for some time. I remember thinking, how old is this woman, cause I was seeing her with my six year old first grade mind that saw her as ancient in 1960 and here it was 1976.
My parents tell me that I was left-handed as a four-year-old, but I was “changed” when I went to nursery school.
And although I do write with my right hand, I don’t think the switch-over was complete. I’m not sure if 50% ambidextrous, but I do know that I’m often more confident doing things with my left hand. It’s definitely the stronger of the two (it’s also bigger), and I have a tendency to throw and catch things using that hand.
I think my brain is wired weirdly to begin with, and I think my ambidextrousness has made this worse.
I just ran across a book titled The Natural Superiority of the Left Hander, and it said that former president Gerald Ford used one hand for those things done sitting down, and the other for those things done standing up.
My sister plays sports left handed, but does most other things right handed.
My grandmother, who is 91 and still going strong, is an identical twin and left handed. Her twin is right handed. They are one of those sets of twins that is so close that even their kids have to look twice to tell them apart (during the war when their husbands were away, they lived together and thanks to rationing, often shared clothes. My father told me he’d tell them apart by smell!)
My grandmother’s left hand has knuckles that are all swollen and misshapen because the teacher would smash a heavy ruler onto her hand if she used her left hand, deforming it eventually. She also had her left arm tied to her body at school but they never broke her - she’s still absolutely, utterly left handed and as stubborn as a boot still now.
Because of the abuse she suffered she protected my Dad who is also a strong lefty, and he was allowed to grow up unmolested even though he is in his 70’s now. He did get snotty comments at school but nothing physical. He is very clever (got scholarships for poor kids all the way through school and college) and artistic, and an anal neat-freak, so I think that helped keep him out of the firing line.
I am also a lefty. Completely. But my father, who cannot use scissors at all, decided that for eating and cutting I should be taught how to do it right handed. That has made life easier but I love being a lefty. I remember a German neighbour commenting when I was about 5 that if I went to a German school, I’d have been corrected by now, and my mother replying very tartly that any teacher attempting such interference would have HER to deal with.
Neither of my kids are left handed but my elder son took a long time to settle to which hand he would use. Japan is still one of those places that “corrects” (I hate that word, there’s nothing wrong with us in the first place! GRR) and I was careful to warn his kindergarten teachers that there was to be none of that as far as he was concerned.
Other people have mentioned that their parents simply never thought they could be left handed and would automatically hand stuff to their right hand. I confess I did/do this with my kids all the time, except to the left! I realised what I was doing when the elder one was about three, and since then if I’m passing pencils or knives or whatever, I will try to simply put it on the table in front of the kid, then they can choose which hand to use for themselves.
My father did say that when he went to school, in a one room schoolhouse in Nebraska, in the 1930’s, that he was forced to learn to write with his right hand. Maybe that’s why his handwriting is rather cramped and dreadful.
(emphasis mine)
…and if that ain’t code for “jacking off,” I don’t know what is. 