During the most recent US Open (tennis), Johnny Mac said that there was a disproportionate percentage of left handed tennis pros. And I also believe there’s a disproportionate percentage of left handed presidents.
If that ain’t proof that southpaws possess diabolic tendencies, I don’t know what is.
HEE HEE HEE! Well-crafted.
Such permissive attitudes as displayed in this thread can come to no good. The evils of growing up in habits of carelessness such as the OP seems willing to allow her daughter to do are being grossly underestimated, and it’s all bound to end in tears.
Ivyboy is a lefty. I believe Ivylad was born a lefty, but his father “turned” him.
My sister is a lefty, and so is her son. They’re everywhere!
My husband claims he was born a lefty but was forced to convert as a child.
I think he’s just looking for an excuse for his horrific penmanship!
ETA: Do any other converted lefties start letters/numbers from the bottom instead of the top, or otherwise write “backward”?
My husband’s not a converted lefty, just a plain old functioning lefty, and he does that. Almost all letters are started from the bottom, written about 1/4 scale (that is, they’re so tiny that even the capitals don’t come halfway up the row on lined paper) and he writes with his hand so far curled around that it’s upside down. Needless to say, his writing is abysmal. I mean, seriously terrible. And I spent most of my formative years helping my mother grade sixth grade papers - I can decipher most terrible handwriting. I literally cannot read most of the letters of his writing.
Of course, he’s a professional writer and English teacher. :smack: Thank god for word processors! He even corrects students’ papers by opening them in Word and adding comments, otherwise the students wouldn’t be able to read them.
I have had suspicions about my 3 y/o son’s orientation as well. So I threw a ball at his head to see which hand he caught it with. Thank you very much TNT court room dramas about catching the fake disability!
Oh, and he’s a lefty. The only one in the family. I guess it will be an adjustment but he’ll drag this family kicking and screaming into the 21st century and we’ll march in those parades together.
In a right-handed world, why is a man’s billfold pocket on the left side? (straightdope.com)
The article mentions 8-10 percent, with a researcher saying it could be as high as 34 percent if left-handers weren’t routinely discouraged. It also says that right-handed vs. left-handed is not a binary state, but a sliding scale.
Middlebro (who may or may not be a converted lefty but definitely has “laterality issues”) does the weirdest 8s. We were taught to start at the middle, do the top loop clockwise, then cross over to do the lower loop counterclockwise. He starts at the top, closes one circle, goes to the middle, closes the other circle, both clockwise.
Before college, I had pretty bad handwriting which would have better if the nuns hadn’t insisted on French caligraphy (round with the long lines vertical): my handwriting just tries to run ahead, for which English caligraphy (tilted forward) is much better. In college I had a teacher who did handwritten Ss like typed ones and for some reason my handwriting went to hell after his course. But I also discovered that I sometimes have an extremely neat, understandable and tiny handwriting: it only crops up when I’m taking notes and concentrating 200% on what the speaker says.
I had a bad tendency all through school to write the letter “N” and “e” backward – actually backward, though. It may or may not be because of my dyslexia, though 
I don’t start from the bottom on letters, but I have often been told that my letters have an odd shape to them.
FWIW, I still bat, shoot hard pool shots and many other things better left-handed. It’s frustrating, though, since I am blind in my right eye, so that makes me have to tilt my head funny when doing things left-handed. Yeh, I’m pretty screwed up, I guess. I shall shut up now.