On Being Left Handed

I'm a Leftie - not my political leaning, which varies according to my mood and circumstance, but left handed.
Gauche, sinestre, corrie fisted, kak handed, widdershins...shall I go on? Being a bit odd and a woman and left handed, I'd probably have been burnt at the stake in days of yore (still might). But instead I have to live in a right handed world and take my simple left-handed pleasures where I can find them.


So as to give you Righties an idea of what it's like to be left-handed (and I'm not complaining) I'll give you a life in the day of me:


Door handles are in the wrong place - as are knobs & buttons and other generally useful things; scissors (and I use them a lot) dig into the fleshy part of my hand (especially my pinking shears - I've looked at left-handed ones but "left-handed" is like "wedding" prefixed ot anything - expensive - and so far my Scottishness has got the better of my left-handedness); books with a vertical spine are a challenge both to read and to write in. I have never unconsciously flicked through a magazine from front ot back - always the reverse, because I am in reverse.


Writing. You want me to start on writing?! Well I've told you already that I love to write. This is due to my prominent qualities of being cussid & thrawn - but I'll come back to that another time. Suffice to say that, being an awkward wee bugger, I liked the challenge of writing, not just mentally but physically.


I'm lucky enough to be of a generation which was not forced to write with its right hand. But I did get corrected for transposing my letters (fair enough) and also writing a sentence at a 135' angle across the page. It used to drive my teachers crazy, but i couldn't help it!


Shall I explain to you Righties what happens when you're left handed and have to write in a right handed way? Well, reverse it, go on, imagine that instead of pulling the pen across the page, you have to push it. Now imagine that you're trying to do that with the thick spine of a jotter caught under your wrist and causing your pen to slip. Okay, now imagine that the ballpoint pen you're using is a bit smudgy (you know the way Bic medium biros are?) and every time you write a word your hand drags across the words smearing them indelibly...
that is what it's like writing left handed.


Now I'm a bit of an expert on writing left handed because I've done a lot of it. Yes I know that's stating the obvious but I mean I've probably written a lot for a left handed person. 
I loved dictation at school - I was a right swat - and it gave me plenty of time ot practice my writing. Not only my style (which generally consisted of a lot of very curly Ys and Gs) but also the size of my writing. 
You know my mum once had a nightmare where my writing was so small that however hard she tried she couldn't read it. I mean there was real fear on the woman's face when she related it to me! 


Ah but that's not all...I'm fortunate ot have a father who's an engineer, a draughtsman. Yes! Pens! (Am I scaring you now?) Aw come on, when you're left handed, pens are important. So I had all the latest Schtaedler (sic?) models (which I broke too often even to be called regularly) and a range of coloured inks that was the envy of my best friend Suzie.


Now I haven't told you yet but I have a Masters degree in Fine Art. {ooh, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck twitch as I write those words (being Scottish means not blowing your own trumpet)}. But I tell you now for a reason:


I am a huge Leonardo Da Vinci fan - a fellow Leftie and general genius for whom the term Renaissance Man was coined. I spent a lot of my teen years reading about his life and copying his drawings.
One of the many ideas that Da Vinci had was for mirror writing. Being left handed, he found it easier (and more confidential) to write in reverse. By write in reverse I mean he wrote backwards, with all of his letters turned around so that if you hold it up to a mirror you can read it. Cool, huh?
LIke I said, I did a lot of dictation at school - especially History - and many  a lesson was spent perfecting my mirror writing. While I became not exactly proficient, I did perfect it well enough not only ot be legible but for it to feel natural. I discovered that if I forgot about trying to consciously reverse letters as I wrote and concentrated on letting my pen be pulled across the page from right to left, then a natural rhythm formed and I could write whole sentences easily and without force.
Amazing! It was like writing like a right handed person - so effortless. 


Now did you know that we not only have a preferred hand but a dominant side? Yes. A great man, (another Renaissance Man - and I do not use the term lightly) by the name of Quincy (and no I don't mean Quincy QI!) told me that. Quincy is an Osteomyologist (don't ask me) and a practitioner in Bio Cranial Therapy. Roughly translated it means that I see him every few months and he gives me a good cricking. You you see, he knows.


As a Leftie, my left side is dominant - which means that my heart is strong and my left arm and leg are stronger etc. Of course the whole brain thing is reversed so that if you're a Leftie the right side of your brain is dominant. Now that always sounds to me the more logical side (since right is, well, right). But it's not. The right hemisphere is known to be responsible for areas like spacial awareness, creativity and intuition.


Did you see how I just did that? Said that as if I were stating a fact? Well I have to be honest and confess that my knowledge of the right brain and its functions is fairly minimal...ok that is the sum of my "knowledge". Hey, so what? Isn't that what we spend our lives doing?


I'm bored now. So you don't think the momentum is waning, let me finish with another wee list of Leftie irritations (if only to rouse my brethren to arms..."arms"!.. funny).   


Table settings, vegetable peelers, can openers, zips, computer keyboards, watches (anti clockwise is the way we work), fish knives! (have you any idea how stupid you feel using a fish knife upside down?), cinema seats, lecture tables... What have I forgotten?! 


Ah, what the hell. It's these differences that make us interesting and ensure we're all having the most varied experiences possible on this wee planet. I love my differences and the more I embrace my own, the more I'm inclined to do so for others - 
nae bad for a wee Scottish Leftie.


PS: Some of my left handed pleasures: leaving my mouse on the `"wrong" side of the computer, laying the table the "wrong" way round (I used to get such shit for that!), cutting things out starting from the "wrong" side and then watching a Rightie struggle ot continue, rearranging a desk so that everything is accessible for a Leftie. Hardly revolutionary but sometimes it's the little things that give us the most pleasure...
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