211226 left-handed rant

 Dec. 26

https://youtu.be/WhJ1MDfvix4  A little song about handedness in plants, by Flanders and Swann.

even yo-yos... 

Are you left-handed? Try spending the day right-handed. Door knobs, lamp switches, can openers, everything, is so easy to work! If you are right-handed, and curious, try spending the day left-handed. It is no wonder left-handed people check locks, stove knobs and switches several times and turn every handle twice - we are not OCD, we are just left-handed! (OCD = Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) We don't get the turn direction right on things that turn - pun. Always, with the puns, right and left, left out in the rain, right you are. Or do I have something else? Do other left-handed people have these issues? 

How do we even know our right from our left? Dogs can learn (or already know, somewhere in their unverbal minds) apparently. I have always had difficulty with this. You say turn right, my brain, even thinking about it, still turns me to the left. While I'm driving the car, there is a "your left"/ "my left" going on and usually pointing. No-one taught me the "left hand makes an L" thing. I just memorized left and right at some point in my early adult years but I have to concentrate to get it right (oh pun! give me a break!) I still cannot fathom how we can know or even have a left and right, except for the dominant hand thing.

Is it our being left-handed that causes door knobs in our houses to come undone? It is why broom ends come un-screwed and fall off when we sweep? I bought a new pair of rose shears last spring, used them upside down for a while in my left hand, switched them to right-side up ("right"-side) still in my left hand and immediately they broke, came right (!) apart, because the pressure was on the weak fastener when they were used backwards. The strong fastener was where a right-handed person put the pressure when cutting. Fiskar's, who made them, did send me a replacement for free when I complained, sending pictures of my broken shears. I never did tell them about the handedness. They would have replied, "Well, duh!", I expect.

For most of my life, I have felt it was my fault that nothing worked. I didn't take my handedness into account, until I was old enough to see its impact. My mother said that she kept putting the spoon in my right hand at meals, but I immediately switched it to my left. More than that she didn't push. She finally accepted I was left-handed. And then my little brother came along, also left-handed. My father had been made to write with his write hand - sorry, right hand. At sixty, he was starting to lose his right-handed edge - his hand started to cramp and his writing became illegible. He had to re-learn to write, with his left. 

I was labelled clumsy; I broke dishes, perhaps they were left (pun) with their handles aimed for a rightie, and the extra need to turn them gave me more chances to drop them; and I couldn't cut with scissors to save my life! No-one thought to get me left-handed scissors. They might have been much rarer then. I have been amazed at my left-handed grand-daughter's dexterity (!) in cutting paper. She was a pro from the start, way younger that I was - I still can't cut well, (still don't have left-handed scissors except in my sewing box!), but Indre, given left-handed scissors as soon as her little fingers were ready, learned fast how to cut accurately along the lines.

Indre is fortunate. She has a left-handed parent - her father - and a left-handed grandparent. Our household at #48 was half lefties! No-one ever treated her like she had a handicap.

*****

K: Why are these scissors in the garbage? (not the shears)

Me: Because they don't work anymore. I tried tightening the screw but it must be stripped, it just came loose again.

K: I think they work for me...

Me: sigh.

*****

Left-handed is why the directions on the package are hard to find; we turn the box the other way looking for them. Brooches are right-handed, probably tie pins are too, if they have an up and down. With brooches, it's partly a matter of how it holds on. Yo-yos also, the string unwinds and the yo-yo stops working. They sell left-handed strings, wound the other way. Microwave ovens have the controls on the right. My mother tried to teach me to knit, several times. I never got it. I did learn to crochet in my teens. I crochet backwards with my left hand. I don't know what other lefties do, but this seems to work. I did learn to knit at last, with ease, from a booklet. My mother didn't live to see it, but I knit right-handed, and almost "channel" my mother, letting my hands do what I remember her hands doing. 

For a while researchers said that left-handedness was the result of brain damage at birth, but they took that off the table again, pretty fast. (Thank you!) Now, handedness has been seen to be linked to genetics. * There is a correlation between right-left brain and handedness, but not a consistent one. There is still so much they don't seem to know about it. Lefties are thought to be more creative, but also more apt to criminal activity. These traits are not explainably linked to handedness, although a higher than normal proportion of prison inmates and artists is left-handed. My theory regarding crime is that some lefties may feel excluded from normal society, and that they may have a difficult time in school, leading to higher drop-out rates and future employment issues. I don't have a theory of why lefties would be more artistic! Maybe they have had to be more creative in negotiating a right-handed world. It has been suggested that the left-hand dominance helps a person access the right non-verbal side of the brain. 

In school, I was taught to turn my paper a certain way, which way made it easy to write back-handed, (ouch!) but was no good for right-slanted cursive, without some digital acrobatics. My hand smudged the page as I wrote, made it messy, made the page greasy and the ink skip. Pens are always untwisting and coming apart while I write, and the nib, designed for pressure at a certain angle, often is inadequate to withstand the different pressure a leftie puts on it. If I use a pen somewhere and it is smooth and welcoming to write with, I will ask if I can take it with me: not, of course, someone's initialled gold-plated Christmas-gift pen, but a store's advertising pen... Ever in search of a good writing utensil, I am obsessed with pens and pencils. Mechanical pencils are useless to me, as much as I like them: the lead breaks with every letter written. I can however write backwards (mirror-writing) with a proper backwards-cursive slant. I have never developed a consistent writing style. The pen and paper, the design of  the notebook, affect it. This might not have anything to do with being a leftie, though, either!

Historically "left" has been, not just the opposite of "right" in space, but has encompassed the opposites of all things right, correct or moral. "Sinister" is from the Latin word for left, and now means evil. Right, on the other hand (kill me now!), is correct, perfect, just right, the right hand of god, the right way, right answer, righteous, right of way, right to privilege.  Since they don't flog lefties as demons, or tie our left hand behind our backs, or cast us out as weirds, it is safe to be left-handed, today, and some companies make their products for left-handed people specially, which is nice. Fortunately, most of us adapt well; left- and right-handed people develop dexterity in both hands, although that may be an oxymoron, to say that a left hand can be dexterous, which word is originally from the Latin "on the right". We also use the word "adroit", which derives from the "right as proper", although today's French uses "droit" for right-hand, while gauche, French for left, means awkward or socially inept, in English. **

I have come to the end of my little left-handed rant. I get it, it's all part of the right-hand dominant thing and it isn't a big deal, compared to poverty, racism, or illness. It's just been bubbling in my brain for a long time. When I was a little girl I had a mug with a duck painted on it. I thought that the picture must be on the outside so that the others at the table could enjoy it. I was probably a grown-up before I figured out that the one using the mug usually gets to enjoy the picture of the duck, since nine times out of ten they are right-handed. I couldn't get the jack-in-the-box to work and I don't remember if anyone explained to me that I was winding it backwards! (Tiny violins, I know!) Speaking of instruments, I play the guitar left-handed on an upside down right-handed guitar. My older, right-handed brother taught me to play, on his right-handed guitar. It is easy for me to follow a right-handed player at a jam, because I can see mirror-image easily.  Is this a common left-handed experience? I still don't know! Left-handed Indre already has a child-sized left-handed guitar that I found second-hand of course. I am grateful too, first that I have two hands that work very well, and second, that I am left-handed. It has taught me interesting lessons about interacting with the world physically and socially. Looking back, it's been a fun ride, really. I learned not to be afraid to be different. There is usually a "right" way to do things, but there are also a lot of other, sometimes left-handed, ways of doing them. Sometimes thinking outside that "right way" box can get you to a new place.

I have decided to learn to yo-yo with my right hand. Keep safe.

Mumma Yaga

There are a number of books written on the subject. I haven't read any yet, WHY NOT? but I have decided to read one now. 

* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-are-some-people-left-handed-6556937/

** etymology source: https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/