Being sinister

Yep, that's me.

It's an interesting thing being left handed. According to the internet, somewhere between 10 & 15% of the world share this affliction with me, and something happened that sparked me thinking about this, so now I'm going to share those thoughts with you.

Part of the reason why being a leftie can be so frustrating is that your brain is wired a bit differently. This means that some things which are natural for a right handed person are the wrong way round for me. A good example is joined up writing. When I was taught this, I followed all the instructions carefully, and was surprised to find that my writing was backwards. I was even more surprised when I found out that this isn't unusual, and that the teaching material for cursive writing will always mean that a left hander will produce mirror writing.

Eventually of course, I figured out how to write the right way round (what a handist term that is!) , and I was able to become a functioning member of society. Now, if it surprises you that schools teach a method of writing at which some kids are bound to struggle at, then some of what follows may shock you to the very core...

When my father was at school, he wasn't allowed to use his left hand for writing. He was forced by teachers to use his other hand, and had ambidexterity forced upon him. From his recollection, he hated it and tried to sneakily use his left. Seeing as he was raised in the dark ages, the teachers had no hesitation in beating him up for not using the proper hand and he was often clubbed around the face with a morning star flail until he put the crayon back in his right hand.

Historically though, left handers have always been treated poorly. In the middle ages, left handedness was seen as a sign of satanic influence (so was usually enough to get the witch hunter looking at you funny); even the word sinister comes from latin for left (sinistrus).

Then there's the problems with scissors, rulers, mice, guitars, can openers and all kinds of other day to day paraphenalia that just aren't designed with left handers in mind. Until you've spent hours as a child being unable to cut pits of coloured paper neatly for a collage, then you've no idea what true frustration is.

But I'm not pretending that there aren't advantages to being left handed. I can write backwards with surprising ease, and apparently left handed people are more likely to be of a genius level intellect (Gabe will comment on this blog that I'm the exception to prove the rule, but he loves me for my thinking really).

Now, the thing that got me started with all this is down to the root cause of left handedness - that my brain is wired backwards. One continuing problem I have is that according to my brain, clocks should be the other way around. I suppose the best way of thinking of it is that for me, clockwise and anticlockwise should be swapped over. This can sometimes be a problem when I glance at my watch to check the time (no, I don't wear a casio calculator watch). Imagine my excitement a little while back when I realised it was a quarter to two, which meant I only had another hour and a bit to go at work. Now imagine the crushing of my spirit that took place when I realised that I am a backward brained moron and it was only 10.15.

Sometimes being left handed is poo.