Left-handed dopers, post here the most maddeningly right-handed tool, instrument, or other object you ever had to use. Polaroid camera, writing desk in school, saxophone…??
For me, it’s the little electronic pressure-sensitive LCD panel used for signing for your credit card at the drug store. The device itself isn’t designed badly, but it’s always put on the counter where a left-hander can’t get to it without twisting in strange directions.
The one at the local TX DPS office has a roll of paper on the left…so my signature on my driver’s license is really FUBAR’ed.
M-16A1 rifle…ejects empties (red-hot, BTW) straight down the front of a leftie’s shirt :eek:. (The -A2 model has a built-in deflector to knock 'em downward :)). The charging handles is also right-handed, which leads to the next item…
Most autopistol safeties and mag releases are right-handed, but they’ve finally started making them ambidextrous, or at least fairly easy to switch over to the other side. These things are important when you’re in a hurry (He who reloads fastest, lives longest)
Reaching over the scope on a righty bolt-action rifle is annoying too (remember the southpaw sniper in Saving Private Ryan?)
Chainsaws…need I say more?
Stringed instruments, like guitars and mandolins. Sure, you can get them left handed but what a pain in the ass that turned out to be…
I’m a rightie, but watching Roommate (a leftie) struggle with a can opener is just short of pathetic.
Then again, he likes my colorful vocabulary when I am attempting Arabic or Hebrew calligraphy, dragging my hand through everything I just wrote.
Take the cheap way out and string it upside down. Hey, it worked for Jimi Hendrix…
Writing in a 3 ring binder. Or writing an essay with a ballpoint, dragging your hand through the ink. Out of high school 20+ years, still remember that.
ladels . . . anything handle-ish . . . desks in classrooms.
Fortunately I use my right hand for the mouse . . .
Don’t even get me started on writing.
Gunslinger said: “Chainsaws…need I say more?”
Absolutely, and almost all other power tools. Circular saws, belt sanders, I use my radial arm saw righthanded, because I can’t see for the motor if I stand to the right so I can use my left hand.
A problem I have is trigger locks, safety catches, a safety on a pistol (although I haven’t shot a pistol in 30 years.) They are all designed to be manipulated with your right thumb, however for a lefty they are in the palm of your hand. Many times I’ve had a drill bit get caught as it went through the material and couldn’t get it to stop because the trigger lock was set by just squeezing the trigger.
I went to school in the 50’s and there was no accomodations for lefthanders. The desks were just arms on the right side with a writing area about the size of a writing tablet. I couldn’t even reach the thing, much less write on it. And of course 3 ring binders.
Scissors, of course, are notorious.
Jim
supposedly lefties live 9 years less that righties. I bet it has to do with deaths relating to right handed appliances and electronics. Just knocks down you poor guys average.
Now try getting a left handed Tuba…in public school… one of my school mates had to be learn right handedness to get that one down.
Scissors . . . Jim, thank you SO much for reminding me of that painful part of my life.
Luckily, I played the drum, which is an “either hand” instrument.
Powertools are just not fun.
There’s a stigma against left handed people being ‘forced’ to write with the other hand. But it’s actually kind of a fun skill to learn. I was never really born with a ‘dominant’ hand, but learned how to write with my left. I can write equally well in both hands now.
Or I guess if you saw my handwriting–it would be ‘equally bad’ in both hands. Oh well.
I hate right-handed scissors. I’m not exactly sure there is such a thing–but occasionally, I’ll run across a pair that will absolutely -refuse- to work for me unless I switch hands.
my mouse.
…yeah, I know you can use either hand, but every computer I’ve ever sat at has it set up to the right. I just figured I’d learn to use it that way, but it’s a bitch. I mean, I use my right hand for so little that, if it weren’t for can openers and pencil sharpeners, my arm would’ve atrophied and fallen off. So, I look like a total maladroit handling a mouse and frankly, I am.
I seem to recall reading that left-handed people are not as left-handed as right-handed people are right-handed – that is, you all don’t have a really dominant hand. The myriad southpaws 'round here do seem more ambidextrous, but that could be of necessity, of course.
Catrandom, working in a magazine office where all the left-handed people have handwriting like Siamese cats, but so, alas, does she.
Just to back you up: I hold a pencil and a gun left-handed (almost ambidextrous with handguns, but left only with a rifle). I do pretty much everthing else right-handed. (Left-eye dominant, BTW)
Also to back that up, I’m mostly right-handed (I write, eat, and play instruments right-handed), but for most sports I’m a lefty. I switch-hit in softball, play lefty in hockey and lacrosse, and can do archery with either hand. Most things I can do either-handed, if they’re not on the list. Have yet to shoot a gun, though. I’m planning to spend some time at a range learning how to shoot when I’m in college. I guess I’m semi-ambidextrous, or at least not uni-handed…
So many things…
scissors are the most painful on a daily basis…
bowling balls hurt my fingers…
stupid stick shift cars…
If this is true, it’s a major surprise to me. Given the inconveniences of left-handedness, I’m not sure why nearly-ambidextrous people would continue to use their left hand for certain tasks. I’m not talking about writing or drawing or anything, I’m thinking of can-openers and scissors.
I have no idea what handedness I am. I write more quickly but no more legibly with my right hand, eat with my left, play right-handed guitar, and have no problem using either kind of scissor in either hand. This is why so many lefty problems are such a mystery to me. I can use righty scissor in my left hand; I just reverse the pressure, as I learned to do using Lefty scissors (the blunt-nosed ones with the green rubber handles) in my right hand in elementary school. So I had always assumed that anyone who was in the middle would and could tend to conform, by using their right hand. This would leave only the hard core of lefties using their left hand predominantly. I’ve never seen a lefty can-opener, but I guess it would be fairly easy to use, using my left hand.
(I also have no idea what eye I favor. The simple test has never worked. “Superimpose your finger over a distant object and close each eye.” I can’t superimpose my finger over a distant object I’m focussed on - I see a pair of transparent finger images and can never decide which one to place on the object.)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Boris B *
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There’s another test you can do for eye dominance.
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hold your hands out in front of you.
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Connect the thumbs and pointer fingers together to make a little ‘triangle’.
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With your arms outstretched–center the item you want to focus on through the ‘triangle’.
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Then close either one of your eyes.
If you can still see the item in the triangle–then you’re looking through your dominant eye.
-Ashley
I forget to mention!
The item you focus on has to be at some distance away. It won’t work otherwise.