Some people cannot make a V using all four non-thumb fingers. I am not so unfortunate. Phew, I can unashamedly attend Star Trek conventions.
However, I can only do it with my right hand. My left hand, it seems, is not a Trekkie. My pinky and ring finger seem to share a set of wiring. When I move my ring finger away from the bad finger, the pinky equally stretches away from my ring finger. This makes a lopsided W which does me no good as I’ve never heard of the planet Wulcan. Try as I might, I just can’t get my pinky and ring finger to move together.
Shazbot!
My question(s): If I lose my right hand in some freak pergium mining accident, will I ever be able to learn to properly salute our Vulcan friends? Can I practice and somehow teach my left hand fingers this important skill? What exercises can I do to achieve success?
Which leads to another question: Assuming I can learn how to make a left-handed V, what is going on in the learning process? My fingers are have sufficient range of motion, so it’s not as if they need to be stretched nor strenghted. Is it the brain rewiring the obdula nelson mandella or whatever?
Any of us who learned to do the Vulcan salute no doubt had difficulties at first, but then “learned” how to control the muscles. (I’m ambi-Vulcanrous.) The same goes for winking, moving your ears, and raising eyebrows. I’ll bet with practice you can train your left hand just fine.
When I was a child, my brother used to taunt me by making the Vulcan salute becuase he knew I was unable to do it with either hand. Therefore, when sitting in class, I would put my hands on the school desk, fingers facing down, so that the desk forced them into a V position. After enduring this for several class periods I was able to do the Vulcan salute.
I don’t know what damage I did to my brain cells or my hand mucles in the process.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to point out, in connection with the O.P., that Pavel Chekov took advanced training in the piloting of interestellar wessels at the Wulcan Academy of Sciences.
Leonard Nimoy himself has said he couldn’t do it at first (that is, when he was a child and saw it being done in the Jewish ceremony which originated the gesture). But with practice he was able to do it with both hands. So there you go.
I learned at a young age, and I would hold the fingers together with my other hand until my hand “got it”. (My pinky would pull away from the ring finger.)
I used my thigh to separate the fingers as a child, and now I can do it with either hand. I can only snap my fingers with my left hand, though, and have not figured out how to train my right.
My anecdote: I have played guitar for over 15 years, and I just experimented with the salute with both hands. My right hand: I just can’t make it happen. My left hand: not only can I do the salute without difficulty, I can switch quickly between 3-1, 2-2, and 1-3 finger patterns.
It took several rereadings before I realized the title wasn’t about a Left Handed Vulcan Statue and then looking around for a good picture of Birmingham Alabama’s Vulcan to be sure it was right-handed.
Oh I forgot to mention the technique: try taping your middle two fingers together and leaving them like that for a while. It’s a great way to train the muscles and it works.
That explains my brother’s freakish ability. He can do those finger patterns too, plus wrap his fingers around each other in ways that defy typed explanation (this finger goes here like this while that one…)
I guess an added benefit is I can then accompany Shatner on his next album.
UPDATE: on the drive home from work I tried using the steering wheel for support as I practiced various manoevers. Once I held the glorious V (for about 20 milliseconds) albeit with a very small separation. There is hope!
Sure. Like finger snapping, I can do the salute with my right hand as well as I can my left (I’m left handed), and it took more practice with my non-dominent hand. I have more trouble with doing the reverse salute with my right hand, though, because my pinkie just doesn’t want to move that way by its lonesome - I can only do it if I move the other fingers with the pinkie first, then move them back, which is a lot different than doing the greeting with the other hand. I suppose if I practiced more, I could get that down too.
FTR, I have little interest in Vulcans, and only taught myself how to do the salutes with both hands to annoy less coordinated right-handed friends who were having trouble doing it with either hand
I just tried to make every possible hand gesture (in terms of finger separation without bending) with my left hand, and although a few were less easy, I was able to do all of them. Obviously, any gesture can be forced by positioning with the other hand. But I suspect that with practice, this forcing can translate to natural movement.
In general, I find that movements that I am used to and perform naturally, I perform with greater “resolution” or closer to analog. Whereas as other muscle movements that I’m not used to yet, are more “digital” - there may only be one or two “transitional” phases between base state and final state. However, if I concentrate, or just habitually need to physically translate between any particular two states, over time it become more fluid.
Although, I do wonder, if there is some other factor involved in more rarely achieved movements - I mastered ear, eyebrow, ad nose wiggling at an early age, but I haven’t found many others who have done the same. I suspect finger training to be somewhat easy for various reasons, but it might be harder for ear muscles…
I remember reading in Nimoy’s autobiography that Shatner couldn’t do it, nor could a lot of other people that had to. They would tie their fingers together using fishing wire. He actually claimed that only a true Vulcan could do it, but I remember even the matriarch in Amok Time (where Spock “kills” Kirk over his wife) couldn’t actually sustain it,
Not being able to do it with your left hand is not big deal, though, seeing as it’s a right hand only salute. I actually thought this thread was going to be about how so many people think it is a left handed one.
Update: I am now almost bi-vulcanic. If I position my fingers with help from a desk or my thigh, I can lift my hand off and maintain the position. 3 times out of five, with slow going effort, I can get into position with no assistance.
I’m not particularly dexterous but never had any trouble doing the Vulcan thing with my right hand. It never occurred to me to try with my left until two minutes ago but could do it perfectly, without any difficulty, straight away - every time.
So whatever the ‘thing’ you need to be able to perform the maneuver easily it isn’t related to being able to work dexterously with your hands.
