I’ve bought the lefties in my life a special spiral notebook that had the spiral wire at the top. This was much appreciated.
I do as well. It bugs righties, for some reason.
Yes, indictable brain damage. It doesn’t make a strong case if the damage is so slight it can’t be observed, does it? OTOH, I too was hypoxic at birth - so much so that they didn’t wait until I was fully delivered to give me oxygen.
Wouldn’t practice make right handed people better at it too? They don’t need to and we do, so it stands to reason that we’re better at it.
So…what does it mean to bat or golf left or right handed? I bowl right-handed, but I’m not sure how that works with something you use both hands on. Which hand is on top (my left)? Which way you face to swing (towards my right)?
I write left handed, and wasn’t really discouraged to do so; however I was pushed gently towards putting the paper in the correct position for lefties: with the paper slanting thus: / (righties slant their paper ). But I write “upside down” or what is more realistically described as down-up. I know a lot of lefties (even famous celebs) do this too but most curl their hand in awkward ways rather than just move the orientation of the paper.
I have a video of it, if anyone is interested.
Left Handed - YouTube (no vouching for my handwriting there - it says “this is how I write. Any questions?”)
I can’t use leftie scissors because they never had any in class when I was growing up, or if they did, it was a school-wide search while I twiddled my thumbs, to find the rustiest pair that didn’t work. So I taught myself the right handed style. I also find using the mouse right handed to be easy and certainly couldn’t do it left handed.
I’m a leftie too—never used left handed scissors, use my mouse right handed, etc. My dad was left handed, as was my mom, and so were my maternal/paternal grandparents.
When you bat left-handed, you stand with your right shoulder towards the pitcher’s mount/fairway/whatever, and righties do it the opposite way.
While we’re all commiserating, though - and I totally feel all of you on those damn spiral notebook metal wire blades augh why god why they are destroying my graphite-stained hand nonsense. I also made it well into college before discovering the magical backwards journal trick.
But how about those horrible, horrible creations, in which some masochistic teacher, slash, carpenter decided to merge the chair and desk together into one rigid bolted to the ground unmovable object of misery. If there are left handed versions, they’re in the far back corner. And have creaky bolts. And they’re broken. And oh also there’s a right-handed person sitting in it for some reason. So you sit in a device in which has been elaborately constructed to accommodate exactly the opposite of what you need.
I have no citation, but I think that the choice of batting side might have something to do with eye dominance. If you’re left-handed and (I think) right-eyed, then you might be in a better position to see the ball, by far the most important thing in batting, when batting righty. I don’t think the motions of batting in themselves make all that much difference. You get adept at what you’re used to doing.
As for myself, I too hated the damned spiral notebooks, but I just gave up using them altogether. Starting early in college, I have used plain white paper for all notes. It avoids the damned spiral (it’s more of a helix, though, now that I think about it), and it really helps when doing math since you don’t have to squeeze integrals and other notation into a small space.
As for scissors, I had to use the crappy left-handed ones or the regular right-handed ones, both with equal discomfort. And I lived with “fancy” right-handed ones ever since. Until I lived in France, and I stumbled upon a good left-handed pair. It took some time to get used to them, in particular, I had to change the way I held the paper I was cutting (so that I could see where the blades were slicing which is on the opposite side for right-handed scissors), but once I got used to it, these scissors were quite nice. I also found a left-handed corkscrew, which is not really all that much easier to use than a right-handed one, but it really gives my right-handed friends problems, mostly because they don’t notice it’s left-handed.
Anyway, to make some semblance of a response to the OP, the reasons for left-handedness are not well-known. The thinking on it is rather basic and follows logic more than empirical evidence. For example, it seems there must be some advantage to having a small proportion of the population be left-handed. The reasons for this seem to be speculation, for example, lefties are better in hand to hand combat since they come at you from the side of the body one is not accustomed to. And so, there is some selection for left-handedness. I personally don’t buy this particular explanation, but that there is some selection for it seems likely to me.
The reasons for the existence of handedness at all are a bit more clear, in that you get spared having to learn how to do things with both hands, especially fine motor skills, such as writing. It’s far easier to move a pencil to one hand from the other than to learn to write with both hands. (Incidentally, I have been known to pick up a pen with my right hand and start writing, wondering for a good thirty seconds or so why writing has become such a pain. Only slowly do I realize that the pen is in the wrong hand. Does this happen to anyone else?)
Another south-paw checking in.
When I was in elementary school in the '70s, my parents found spiral-bound notebooks (with ruled paper) that were bound on the right side. There are on-line retailers who carry them. Here are a few examples, other brands are available.
I hated those desks with the arm rests that were attached to the right-hand side only. Had to deal with them in elementary school, high school and college.
Several years ago I learned a new way to write: I turn the paper 90 degrees to the left and write vertically from the “bottom” to the “top” of the page. That way I don’t have to crab-claw my hand. This technique is especially useful for producing flowing signatures.
When I was ~13 years old, my mom got me a very high-quality pair of left-handing sewing scissors from Sears. I still have them and love them! I use them for cutting almost everything.
Just to provide a counter-point: I’m right-handed, write and throw with my right hand–but I bat and golf left-handed, for very similar reasons. That’s how my left-handed father taught me, you see … My elder son is left-handed as well, so there’s some anecdotal evidence for some kind of recessive genetic component.
[bolding mine]
There’s your problem with baseball. You’re supposed to throw the ball with the hand that isn’t wearing the glove.
My maternal grandfather was left-handed, and one of my brothers is also left-handed. My youngest brother, who is right-handed, shoots pool left-handed because he was taught to play by Grandpa.
My late wife was left-handed, but it was not genetic; she suffered from Erb’s Palsy and had only limited use of her right arm. Since her handwriting could charitably be described as chicken scratching, it seemed clear that she was “wired” to be right-handed.
When I was first learning to write, I would use my left hand to the middle of the page, then would switch. It made my first grade teacher crazy. In years before, she was in the habit of tying left hands to the chair seats to make all her students write “correctly.” She was told to stop doing that, and allow handedness to develop naturally.
In second grade I was told to pick a hand. I picked left.
I’m left-handed, but I learned to do many things right-handed by way of observation. To this day, I have better throwing accuracy with my right hand, but can typically throw farther with my left. I bat, golf, play racquet sports, handball etc. better right-handed.
The exception is playing the guitar - for some reason I started playing lefty and could never learn to play right-handed, to the lifelong dismay of my wallet, since lefty guitars are typically harder to come by, and more expensive, than righties.
What is really odd is that my left collarbone was broken when I was born due to the doctor’s overly-vigorous use of forceps, and I had to have it re-set at a few months old. So my left arm was pretty much non-functional for my first year, but I still wound up being left-handed.
Apparently, I do not fall into the ‘most’ category. My right hand is an appendage that happens to be attached to my body. Even when typing, I type most letters with my left hand.
(This is despite having primary teachers who tried to force me to use my right. Thankfully, my parents began to question why my homework which was completed with my left hand was so much neater than the schoolwork I brought home and put an end to that.)
To this day, right-handed devices elude me.
(The only thing I do use with my right hand is a mouse. I am actually faster and more accurate with my left but using my right allows my left to be on the much harder to use keyboard typing while the right clicks as necessary.)
i’ve heard a lot of different idea like most things there are different reason some people gene play the roll but i read once that some left handers are a twin with a vanishing twin