I’ve only tried the cartridge pens, so that may be my problem. I’ll have to give your suggestion a try! Thanks.
Southpaw
Contact me; I will give you information on where to get quality left-handed nibs.
Persephone, could she flip it around and use it upside down? Also, we have another version of the Magna Doodle-type toy called a Ghostwriter. With this one, you can draw on both sides, so the pen is either on the right or the left, depending on wether you use the front or back side.
I’m ambidextrous, so I rarely have problems. But I do have sympathy. I recently broke my pyrex measuring cup. I didn’t realize that the replacement cup I bought has a twist in the spout that makes it unusable for left-handers. When I am cooking and pouring liquid the hand I use depends on which burner I’m using. If I’m using the left burner, I stir with my left hand and pour with my right so I can easily set the cup down on the center of the stove. When using the right burner, I stir with my right and pour with my left, except with this new cup I inevitably spill broth all over the stove. I really don’t know how you left-handers put up with this stuff on a daily basis.
For me, nothing was ever as frustrating as a right-handed spiral notebook (even worse than a 3-ring binder) and a cheap ballpoint pen. My mother went through cases of hair spray trying to get the ink out of my long-sleeved white shirts that were part of my school uniform.
For my left-handed son, the curved hockey sticks were always a major problem. Sure we could get left-handed curves, but they were much harder to find.
I once had a 1962 Chrysler with a push-button transmission. They put them on the left side of the steering wheel. The turn signals were on the left, as was the ignition key, the lights and dimmer switch. The only things I had to use my right hand for were the heater/ac and radio. I loved that car.
I guess I’m really messed up.
I’m right-eye dominant.
I write and throw left handed. I can write right-handed, by not well.
Actions that require two hands I do right handed. I play golf, pool, etc righty.
Everything else I do with whatever hand I learned it with. Scissors and can openers are no problem for me.
Some things I do with either hand, but almost always better left handed.
But, to finally get to the point of the OPs question:
Like everybody else, I find right-hand-centric writing surfaces a royal pain in the ass.
<slight hijack>
Gunslinger: I agree with you whole heartedly. I’ve learned to drop the clip with my left index finger, but the safety on my old Browning might as well not be there.
At the risk of starting an arguement, Ruger has had ambi or switchable safetys for quite some time now, and I’ve never had a gripe with their quality. <hijack ends>
I’ve managed to adapt almost all of my life to using right-handed equipment. The main exception to this is can openers. After 30-whatever years of using right-handed openers, I find that I can’t use leftie ones at all. And, the only way I can use the right-handed openers is to reach my left hand around to grab the handles while turning the cutting wheel with my right. Kind of an overhand move.
For the record, I play guitar right-handed, and shoot hockey left.
I have a Taurus PT 101 (same as a Beretta 96), and it has an ambi safety and a switchable mag release (but I just leave it righty and push it with my middle finger), but the slide release is on the wrong side! I still haven’t figured out how to work that left-handed…[sub](note to self: find out if Colt makes a left-handed 1911 and if so, get one)[/sub]
I don’t have problems with scissors or can openers, but I really hate right-handed knives. There are some paring knives that are made with only one sharp edge and it is always on the side appropriate for righties.
I also get annoyed by right-handed butter knives–you know, the ones that are slightly curved. The worst part is that these usually appear at formal dinners when you are really trying not to drop butter all over the table.
When I was in high school I found a source for left-handed spiral notebooks. It really saved a lot of wear and tear on my wrists, but my math teacher always gave me (good-natured) grief about it because they messed up his stack of homework notebooks. Too bad.
Oh I almost forgot, amoung the other convoluted things I do: Golf, I drive left handed(boy finding those clubs is a bitch) but I putt right handed.
another thing that pisses me off is left handed baseball gloves… when I was little I wanted to join the little league thing, but I couldnt because I couldnt find a glove… then I finally found one but it was a teenaged mutant ninja turtle glove with michaelangelo (or however you spell it–the one with the orange head thing) on it.
Do any of remember those lame right-handed desks in high-school. All the right handed people got this nifty arm-rest to lean on when writing, but my left arm and wrist always got SO SORE cause my elbow was sort of drooped over the small part of the desk and hanging in space.
Oh, sweet sweet memories.
I’m pretty ambidextrous. I eat and write left-handed but do just about everything else right-handed. In fact I had the opposite problem of those lefties who were converted to righties: once my teacher in Kindergarten discovered I wrote with my left hand, she kept forcing lefty scissors on me. But I couldn’t cut straight with my left hand; I could with my right. I play musical instruments righty, shoot righty, throw righty (although I can throw weaker but more accurately lefty). I can hit equally from either side of the plate.
I’ve never had a problem with can openers, and when I write, I turn my paper sideways, so niether of those things bother me. I cut right handed, and can’t even use left handed scissors with my left hand.
There is one thing that always drives me crazy though. I’m a chemistry major, and I would kill for a left handed graduated cylinder! My measuring cup is also right handed, but I manage. I have considered swaping it with my mom’s lefty one when she’s no looking (she’s not left handed, and I don’t know how she ended up with it).
I’m left-handed, but right-eye dominant. I gave up on left-handed scissors in kindergarten, when the only ones available were so old and rusty they wouldn’t cut. I learned how to do it right-handed, and I don’t think I could even cut left-handed these days.
Same with can openers. I don’t have any problems with these, I don’t recall ever fumbling with any type of right-handed ones. Spatulas annoy me because some of them have that slanted end that is there for right-handers.
I absolutely can not use a left-handed mouse; I simply learned it the right-handed way and my left hand just won’t do it! Plus, I like that I can type pretty well with my left hand, while mousing with my right. I also use the keypad on the right side of the keyboard, with no problems.
Ah, yes, erasable ink pens. I write “upside-down” (i.e. the paper is slanted to the far left), and I not only ran my hand across the line I was writing, but the previous ten or so lines as well. Sometimes you couldn’t even read what I’d written when I was done. And the side of my hand was stained blue.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned clip boards. But that is a specific “upside-down” writer problem. I can’t write on things that are in clip boards without taking the paper out, because the damn clip is in my way.
All you lefties who write normal have it good… 
Other “upside-down” writers are Bruce Willis and Christian Slater.
In the late 70s I went to San Francisco, and found a delightful little store on Pier 39 called Left-Hand World. I don’t know if it’s still there; but one newspaper clipping on the wall depicted a mirror-image grand piano–with the strings and keyboard built so that when you strike the keys going left to right the pitch starts at the high end of the musical scale and goes down, instead of starting at the low end and going up!
I told some people back here in the L. A. area after my trip; they didn’t believe me. If I had only been able to photocopy that clipping…
So far as I’ve heard only one left-handed musician–Jimi Hendrix–didn’t seem to be fazed by a right-handed instrument. He either restrung his guitar or played it upside-down, or whatever. Apparently he didn’t care…