Well, I am very left handed & I have always worked in professions where
the number of left handers one encounters seems to be above the % in the
population as a whole: academia, art, computing. This might lead one to
lend some credence to the left-brain, right-brain stuff: in left handers
the right brain is supposed to be "prominent." My own feeling is that
left-handedness can give you fairly direct experience of cultural
mediation by artifacts and rituals which are essentially right handed,
and this affects how/what you learn.
A few examples:
- eating habits. In Britain we use the knife and fork at the same time,
and there is a proper (right-handed way) round. Easier to eat in the US
style, which some left-handers adopt.
- pens. If one is of a certain age, one has learned that it is
impossible to write left handed with (calligraphic) pens, which must be
pulled across the paper, and blot if pushed. You will observe many
left-handed people cope with this right-handed artifact by curling their
left hand right around and pulling. I'm sure the inventor of the ball
point pen was left handed!
- cars. Driving in Britain the gear lever (shift stick) is to my left.
- scissors. It is impossible to cut with some right hand scissors in the
left hand.
- swords. According to my history teacher, we Brits drive on the wrong
side of the road because the Romans would pass each other right side to
right side (i.e. stay to the left) in case they had to draw swords and
fight (right-handedly, of course).
- teaching. A specific answer to your question, and I know that I was
not the only case. When I first went (early) to school, I had maanged
to acquire a sort of joined-up script. There had been some recent
publicity that forcing left handers to do things in a right handed way
somehow did them (brain) damage. My teacher took one look, saw that I
was already doing something like writing, and left it at that. The
folks at LCHC will confirm that I still have infant writing!
- heraldry. If you were born "on the wrong side of the sheets" of a
noble father you might still get to bear arms, but your coat-of-arms
would have a diagonal bar going the wrong way so as to display your
bastardy.
So far, I've met only one art teacher who actually makes sure she has
some left-handed scissors for the left handers in her class. She is of
course left handed herself.
yours sinistrally,
Tony Scott
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