Wrong Handed and Proud
by Trey
I recently saw a post in my twitter feed that just hit me the wrong way, one of the people I follow stated they were doing something to encourage their kid to favor their right hand instead of encouraging the left handed tendencies they were showing. Some of the reasons stated were, dealing with weird scissors, bumping elbows while eating, hand writing slanting the wrong way, and awkwardness shaking hands. So let’s take these one at a time.
Scissors, yeah most are made so that they are comfortable for right handed people and near impossible to use left handed, but is it really that hard to use scissors right handed? It’s rare that I need to use scissors, maybe I’m odd in that. Even if you don’t want to use scissors right handed as a lefty, I dislike it but do it for convenience, you can buy left handed scissors. Jodi even found a left handed notebook for me once. It was made so the spiral was on the right and it was perforated on the right side of the paper to prevent the uncomfortable need to rest your hand on the metal spiral.
Bumping elbows while eating, this can be annoying when sitting in close quarters, but most of the time it’s no issue at all. If you’re out with people you know it’s usually pretty easy to negotiate a seat placement where this isn’t an issue. I usually take the head of the table or the seat where no one will be on my left side if we’re in a crowded place, no one has yet to complain about my request for this.
Hand writing slanted the “wrong” way. I think my quotes are enough on this one.
Awkwardness shaking hands? I’ve never felt awkward when shaking hands. If you’re taught early on which hand you are to shake hands with I don’t see this being an issue. I honestly never thought about it until I read this.
Simple fact is handed-ness isn’t learned, if this was the case there would be no left handed people in the world. Maybe my extreme dislike for this is because I’m left handed, but I would hope this doesn’t just bother lefties.
Comments
You’re definitely not alone in your thinking Trey. The post you came across sounds pretty ridiculous to me. I think you provided good support against their reasons for trying to keep their kids from being “wrong” handed. The only thing that I can think of that would be hard for a lefty is learning to play sports from someone that is a righty. Although, nowadays it is great to be both right and left-handed in many sports. Look at Phil Mickelson who became a left-handed golfer (even though he is right-handed) just by mirroring his father while he was playing.
I must say that I know I’ve called you “wrong” handed in the past, but that was just in teasing fun and of course you know that. By no means do I think right-handedness should be dominant over left-handedness and I don’t think people should force their kids to be one way or the other.
Oh yeah, and as a right-handed person I don’t find it hard to use left-handed scissors and cut with my left hand. I even grab my fork with my left hand sometimes, no biggy at all.