I think the degree of “handedness” varies quite a bit.
Most lefties I’ve met have a usefull right hand. Mine is only for decorative purposes, and to balance my body weight so I don’t have a list to the port side.
At work, everything is set up for the right handed. All the mail goes into the case with the address to the left. I have come to accept that I will never be as fast as most righties. Still frustrating, though.
I know you guys have problems with different things, but do you have any idea what it is to be raised by two left handed people and be right handed?
Couldn’t help me tie my shoes. Forget printing! So many people mistake me for a lefty at first glance because I wear my watch on my right wrist. Out of habit. I cut my food with my left hand.
My sister and I used to roll with laughter while watching mom use a can opener. (I know it’s not funny!) We did get her an electric one. Not much better I know, but not as messy.
Ice cream scoops used to give her fits also.
We had a wonderful store around here called simply southpaws. It was great.
Got my parents left handed pens and for mom an ice cream scoop. I think they even had a can opener.
I also know now why I stayed so thin while I lived with mom. She sat to my right. Nothing on my fork ever made it to my mouth.
Now, I am married to a lefty! Go figure.
Kinda nice when you go out to dinner and you get to sit at the end or the head of the table because nobody wants to sit by you. 
He used to fire his weapon right handed in the Army.
And for those of you who went to school where they tried to make you right handed…my mom used to tell me horror stories about the nuns where she went to school.
its weird how mostly everything is made of right handed people, I mean even the computer, the mouse is shaped for your right hand, you can switch it to use your left hand but its still shaped odd and the keyboard has the # pad on the right side too. what really pisses me off is can openers, I had to by a special left handed can opener so I could EAT. I also dont like notebooks, I have to use them backwards cause the spiral is in the way, and it confuses my teachers cause you have to read it from the back.
Some stores have credit card machines where you sign the receipt while it’s still in the machine. You wind up with hand pressing all the buttons. One I haven’t seen in a while is banks or other such places with pens chained to the counter on the right. I’ve never had a problem with tools like sissors, can openers, power tools, etc, I just use whatever hand they were designed for. Any throwing activity (darts, frisbee, etc) I do lefty. If I decide to take up golf again, I plan to take lessons right handed so I don’t have to unlearn all my bad habits. Here’s a trivia question: in what sport are you REQUIRED to play right handed?
Polo.
My solution for can openers.
Take it off the wall mount, hold the wall end in your right hand and use the left to wind the handle, works a treat.
Doors are usually the wrong way round.
I tend to have much better clutch control on the bike than a righty.
Shop counters are usually the wrong way round and I manage to knock things all over the place when writing cheques.
Cord outlets on portable power tools are often on the wrong side.
Camera shutter release buttons are on the wrong hands.
On my bicycles I put the front brake on the left side lever as it is my strongest hand but if someone else has a go on them they invariably crash, which I find to be fun 
Many joysticks are pretty much useless to me.
…except for one relatively recent development, that I’ll come back to.
I’m unquestionably lefty - dominant left hand, left foot, left eye. But I’ve never really had a problem adapting to righty desks, can openers, scissors, circular saws…oh, I use them all lefthanded, alright, but just don’t seem to be bothered by any of it. Though I do use my mouse righthanded; that way my wife and I don’t have to switch back and forth. And I can make notes on a pad of paper with my left hand while clicking around the Web with my right; it’s very convenient.
The one righty appliance that I find genuinely annoying is a computer keyboard. It’s got the number pad on the right side (I never use it; my right hand is ‘dumb’ that way), and the damned ‘insert’ key is right next to the backspace key, which my sloppy right hand is constantly hitting when it overshoots the backspace. And then I wind up overwriting text I’ve already typed.
Fortunately, I recently found a lefty keyboard at http://www.thelefthand.com/ . And, even better, my employer sprung for the $90 to buy me one! Gonna get one for home, too. Problem solved.
For me, on the whole, using my middle name in a first-name, middle-initial world has been a bigger lifelong aggravation than being a lefty in a righty world.
Hockey (OK seeing as this is largely a North American board field hockey).
I’m a righty, and my husband was born lefty, but forced to switch. He does most things right-handed, but he’s pretty okay with his left.
Our three-year-old daughter, though, is a total southpaw. Her right hand is there simply because she was born with one.
One of her favorite toys is a MagnaDoodle that Santa brought her. She just loves it. The little magnetic pencil is attatched to the right side of the tray, though, so the string gets in her way when she tries to draw. I’ve looked & looked, but I’ve not been able to find a MagnaDoodle for lefties. Has anyone seen one of these?
And one of these days, we’re going to have to get her a left-handed guitar. She’s got a little student model-sized acoustic that she loves to strum, but lately, she’s taken to strumming it upside down. Figured that one out all on her own.
I don’t have many of the problems others have mentioned (except those electronic signature pads in the stores). Can openers have never been a problem, niether have computer keyboards (I use the number pad right-handed) or mice.
But I had an art teacher in grade school who insisted I use left-handed scissors. I told him I cut right-handed, but he wouldn’t listen. He figured since I was left handed, I must use lefty scissors. After I butchered about a ream of construction paper trying to cut a straight line left-handed, he finally let me cut right-handed.
One thing I wish I could do is calligraphy. Those dang pens just don’t work for lefties!
If you’re using dip-pens (not the cartridge pens)
- Get left-handed nibs, or
- Use right-handed nibs and use them upside down.
I use right-handed oblique cut nibs, and found out, after 23 years of calligraphy, I have been using them upside-down. No one ever caught that, and I’ve never had an ink accident with then. I also use lefty nibs for special effects. I have knocked the bottle off the desk a few times, but never had a problem with the pens leaking ink because the resevoir was upside-down.
I will admit, it is a challenge to teach calligraphy to lefties. We’ve (students and I) tried many things including odd arm contortions and elevating the arm and wrist. Frankly, I’m stumped. As I posted, I am learning Arabic an Hebrew, so I understand the frustration. Any suggestions?
Right there with you, it’s pretty much what I was going to say. I’m sorry to say this, but the idiot who designed that with no regard for the left handed person should be publicly humiliated. Or shot.
polo (and by extension bicycle polo) is the sport I was thinking of. I’ve only seen (field) hockey played a few times, but seem to remember players using the stick to both sides of their bodies. In polo all the action takes place on the right.
Yes you can play the ball “reverse stick”. However the stick is flat on only one side and you must hold the stick left hand above right (ie right handed) when playing such a shot.
Guns, I am an oddball when it comes to guns, I shoot all rifles right handed as I am right eye dominant, I shoot handguns mostly left handed, but I look goofy doing it(the gun is in my left hand while being lined up with my right eye) but most revolvers I can shoot equally well with either hand(cowboy action and grips only)
In addition to polo and field hockey, there’s arm wrestling, which is a sport for the beer-swillin’ couch spuds of the world…
To be pedantic, picmr, while you can only use one side of the (field hockey) stick, you can play with either left or right hand at the top of the stick. None-the-less the bias is very strong and the vast magority of left handers do play predominantly as righties (Ric Charlesworth, Aust captain and national womens coach) was one high profile example. Lefties playing as lefties were uncommon, I can only recall playing against a couple in the top grade, though there were more in the junior ranks.
One of the business managers at work had a theory that he would be more efficient on his computer if he used the mouse with the left hand, freeing his right for the keyboard.
In theory it might work, however, he persisted in using a right handed eorgonomic mouse in his left hand and didn’t switch over the mouse buttons. So a left left mouse click usually done with the right index finger was done with the little finger of his left hand, held obliquely across the mouse. After a bout of tendonitis, he gave the practice away.
erasable ink pens
scissors (especially those damned ‘lefty’ scissors which did nothing but remind me of my sinistrality through pain)
never had a problem with can openers, though.
jb
I agree with the notebook binders being a pain in the ass and the DMV signature things. My signature really looks like shit on my drivers license.
I used to have a cheese shredder (the kind that you have to turn the handle to grate the cheese) and it was designed for right handed people only and I like to switch hands while I’m grating so they don’t get too tired/sore. I finally found one through Pampered Chef that you can switch to right or left handed and I love it.