I’m left handed. Left side dominant for everything, actually. And, although like most left-handed people I’ve been forced to learn how to use my right hand much better than most right-handed people use their left, there are only 3 things I do exclusively with my right hand: use a computer mouse, wipe my behind*, and bowl/throw skee-balls.
*When I was a wee left-hander, right-handed adults were quick to correct attempts by left-handed children to shake hands with their left hands. Oh, no, they said, scandalized, we shake with our right hands because people wipe with their left hand. Yeah, you do, but if you want me to offer you my right hand I guess I will…
Lefty primarily, but some non-sinister uses maybe eye-dominant:
Pistol/rifle right-handed
Scissors right-handed (you learn what was available at the time)
Some hand tools ambi (when you have worked on military airplanes it’s whichever arm/hand can get access to thing you’re trying to get at)
Guitar/Bass right-handed (didn’t realize they made lefty instruments when I was learning)
Mouse right-handed. A real help for CAD. Can take notes/do calcs. while drawing.
Left or right-hand drive cars have never been an issue.
Right handed for almost everything except shooting pool, shooting a gun, and shooting a bow/arrow. This can be easily explained as when I was young and my dad being right handed I would stand facing him holding the gun/cue/bow left handed while he taught me how to shoot.
Won quite a bit of money playing pool when I offered the pool sharks to play left handed “to make it fair”. I would play their game plan of losing the first few games and then going double or nothing and then barely beating them the next few games to think they had a chance. You had to learn when to leave before they found out they were getting scammed.
Sure, he would hold the gun on one side helping support it while I stood on the other because I didn’t have the strength to hold up the barrel of the gun. Single shot .22 so I didn’t need to worry about shells flying across my face.
Later I got an Ithaca single shot .22 youth model that fit much better that I could shoot on my own.
I hold a hockey stick left-handed, and I have no idea why. I bat and golf right-handed, but somewhere in the transition from both-hands-together grips to hands-widely-separated grips my handedness changes.
I’ve never tried field hockey, but it seems kind of in-between. I wonder which side I’d find more comfortable.
I am very much righty. If I try to throw a ball or bat lefty I will probably injure myself. It was very bad news when my right arm was paralyzed when I had a stroke. Luckily I regained the use.
I can shoot a pistol left handed because we are required to do off hand shooting. I play pool left handed because that’s what felt natural and no one told me different.
My left 1st toe is prehensile but not my right. As a result it’s an interesting party trick (for a certain definition of “interesting”) but not real useful otherwise.
Right handed but have noticed over the years that I always try to open jars and such with my left hand which makes me wonder if I should have been a lefty.
I’m righty, but I wonder if this poll is skewed toward some amount of self-selection. I would hypothesize that someone for whom handedness or some other trait is a remarkable attribute (being left handed in this case) would be more likely to answer in a poll than someone who is like most everyone else.
My own personal observations reflect about 10% left handers in my life, and no apparent correlation among “more intelligent” or “more artistic” or “more XXX” people than others. And that seems to be about where left-handedness should be among a population. I know in my daughter’s class of 24 people at an academically strong school, she is one of only two left-handers, as well.
I’m right-handed, but my dominant eye is the left. That caused me to suspect my parents had forced me to convert to righty as a child. Now I know my right eye’s pupil doesn’t respond properly to light changes, and childhood pics show I probably always had that. In photographic terms, I often have the wrong f-stop, and it messes with the right-side focus.
I started out with a dominant right leg, but now I have hip bursitis on that side.
That is a nice thought, but Leftys are more aware of their handedness and are more likely to respond to this poll. And the poll numbers show that this is so.
I am right handed and so is my ex husband. We had four children together. The two eldest are right handed and the two youngest, left handed. The left handed ones tend to be more ambidextrous in my opinion. They write with their left hands but do a lot of fine motor work with their right hands - such as using scissors, playing the guitar, sport activities. Perhaps it was just growing up in a right-handed world so they had to adapt. I know in my own case, my left hand is mainly just to balance my body. I am quite useless doing anything much with it.
I’m not so much ambidexterous as ambiclumsy and complicated. For some things I’m a righty, for some a lefty, some I can do with both hands equally well. My brother had to sit down when he saw me switch screwdriver and wrench and continue working without a hitch; he says I’m the only person he knows who can do that, and he’s worked in construction for more than twenty years. And sometimes there’s simple tasks that don’t feel correct with either hand, such as using cutlery.
According to my archery instructor (I feel so fancy when I write that) I happen to present something which he’s seen before but only in women. I start off as right-dominant but when I get tired I become left-eye dominant. I guess that is part of my general problems with spatial perception when tired.
Most of my cousins in the paternal side are lefties; the ones on the maternal side and my brothers are righties. Dad and his brothers had a “con” going for several years where they’d get people to bet against them at Jai-Alai thinking those four blonde, polite, fancy-sounding, right handed guys would be easy pickings (they behaved at the bar as if they didn’t have a left hand). Once they got to the court, two were lefties and one was ambidexterous… and despite their pale looks and classy diction, they were very much local boys, they’d grown up playing Jai-Alai. The ploy only worked until every player in town knew about them.
I write left handed but do most sports right handed. I believe my grandfather was left handed as well, but not sure. Fortunately, I came along after left handedness was seen as bad and sinister. I have no memory of being punished for being a southpaw.
