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Left Handers

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08:24 / 02.07.02

are there any left handers here? i had my left handedness repressed at school - teachers wouldn't let me write in the only way i felt comfortable, i.e. with the paper nearly horizontal on the desk, i had to use right handed scissors, which gave me muscle cramps in my hand, and i don't know whether it was a result of this that made me do some things right handed - holding cutlery, playing guitar, holding a cricket bat. a fellow left hander laughed at my awkward right handed ticks and so i started doing left handed ones and it felt so much easier that i realised i could do all my writing this way - i began writing back to front; when held up to a mirror, it read perfectly. haven't done it for a while, but i really feel like i need to again. is this normal? it never even occured to me that this might be natural. are left handers generally resigned to not expressing their left handedness? and could having it repressed damage a person?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:33 / 02.07.02

are there any left handers here?

I'm a leftie.

...i realised i could do all my writing this way - i began writing back to front; when held up to a mirror, it read perfectly.

That's actually more common than you'd think.

are left handers generally resigned to not expressing their left handedness?

I don't know about that... I find things like can-opener and scissors a bugger to use, but I write left-handed and always have. I've noticed that a lot of engineers do.

and could having it repressed damage a person?

YES.

Repressing a child's natural handedness causes severe emotional problems such as anxiety and depression. This has been well-known for many years; I'm shocked and disgusted that someone of your generation was still being forced to do things right-handed. Your teachers want a kick up the arse.

08:40 / 02.07.02

wow. thanks so much, mc. i feel a bit ashamed for not having learnt more about this - i was always taught that being left handed was just being awkward and didn't think more about it until recently. and i have suffered from depression and anxiety. holy shit! i think i should talk to some lefties (i never really met any) and get some more information. feels like there's a gap to fill in here.

Rollo Kim, on location

08:42 / 02.07.02

I'm a lefty, or a 'caggie hander' as they say round our way. I write left handed, but I do everything else (scissors, hitting things, holding a fist up to God, thumping computer mouse, playing musical instruments etc) with the right one.

I'm amazed that people find it even vaguely 'amuzing'???? But they do don't they?! And surely any form of repression is bad?

08:48 / 02.07.02

In the past, left-handedness has often been stigmatised - right on down to how we refer to it - Dexterous= right handed, sinister= lefthanded (check out the etymology). Funny you should mention engineers since my father is an engineer and also left-handed...

09:04 / 02.07.02

I'm a left hander, I had heard that if it is permenantly repressed then it causes brain damage, but this seems a bit over the top. One of my friends said it was good to try writing with both hands to balance out both sides of the brain. Does anyone believe all that stuff about left handers having one side of the brain (I forget which it is)more dominant than the one dominant in right handers? Or also those qualities that left handers are supposed to be more prone to e.g creativeness, madness?

10:12 / 02.07.02

I'm leftie too and do anything other than writing with the right hand.
One of my uncles has been repressed during his childhood and became stammerer because of it.

11:52 / 02.07.02

I'm fairly dominant right-handed, but it is part of family lore that I used to pick up all my little crayons with my left hand as a tot & that Dad "trained" me to use my right hand. Which I do not remember but fiercely resented as a teen, but believed less as I got older... until about half a year ago, we were all together & my niece who is me reincarnated was coloring in the background, and under the hubbub I could hear my dad's tiny voice: don't use that hand! don't use that hand! use the right hand! And I did swoop in like a fury.

12:07 / 02.07.02

I'm left-handed. I never learned to write the "left-handed way" with the paper turned almost horizontal and your hand turned in so it's almost touching the inside of your arm. My handwriting sucks horribly so if I'm writing a report or doing math problems, I have to write really slowly, but dammit I'm happy that way. I don't need any right-handed fascists telling me. "No, no, Trijhaos, you have to put the paper this way, and hold your pencil like so". Have these people ever actually tried to write that way? Although, I predominantly use my left hand, I do use my right hand for stuff that needs to be done right-handed. Opening an oven, using the computer mouse; stuff like that.

Most of my family is left-handed; both my mom and sister are lefties. My dad was born a leftie but because of his real father and his views, he had to learn to do everything right-handed. I haven't noticed any major problems because of this repression.

12:15 / 02.07.02

Im a lefty. when learning to write the teacher positioned my fingers in an awkward, very uncomfortable way. dont know if its a contributing factor, but I have problems with my hands and wrists which originated and is stronger in my left. its extremely difficult to write for longer than a minute or two (you should see when I attempt to write a real letter) - my hand spasms painfully and my fingers wont clutch or glide properly. I can no longer draw

no one tried to keep me from writing left handed, but there has always been a bit of teasing about the way I write (like many lefties, I write with my fingers sort of pointing downwards, my wrist hooked). I always always sport the ink smears on the bottom of my fingers and hand and when forced to write in one of those damn sprial notebooks my leftmost writing is always skewed

The Apple-Picker

12:32 / 02.07.02

S'true that the left side of the brain controls the movement of the right side of the body and that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. That is, if I'm remembering my Intro to Psych correctly.

As for whether one is then more inclined to the characteristics associated with one side of the brain because of her handedness, I don't buy it.

12:35 / 02.07.02

Is it really true that left-handed people have a lower life expectancy than right-handed people?

Please tell me this is sort sort of horrible urban legend or story made up to scare poor left-handed children.

12:40 / 02.07.02

Also a southpaw. And that's the only time I'm ever going to use that phrase.
I love the Simpsons episode where it turns out practically the entire cast are left-handed. As is Matt Groening.

12:49 / 02.07.02

I'm left-handed. For that reason, when all the other kids in school were learning joined up writing, I and a few other left handed people were sent off to another room to learn a different, weird handwriting. So now my writing looks like an unreadable medieval manuscript. I'm still not really sure exactly what all that was about but if I want something to be read I tend to print..

12:57 / 02.07.02

Oh, and by the way, glad to hear that my fellow cack-handed freaks also hold the pen in a funny way.

Rollo Kim, on location

13:13 / 02.07.02

Hadn't occurred to me that it would be the cause of my 'weird' handwriting. On the plus side, sport: baseball... it never occurs to anyone you're pitching differently to everybody else.

13:16 / 02.07.02

"Is it really true that left-handed people have a lower life expectancy than right-handed people?"

Ive heard this, as well as that we are more accident prone. I personally fit into that latter category, but so does my right handed daughter

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:29 / 02.07.02

I never learned to do the turning-the-paper-round thing. But then my handwriting is utterly pants and my left pinkie is frequently blue from being dragged across the inky page, so maybe you shouldn't read too much into that.

It's true about the cross-lateralisation thing-- one side of the brain does indeed control the opposite side of the body. However, some studies have shown that left-handers are less cross-lateralised than right-handers, i.e. both halves of the brain seem to be involved in controlling each half of the body.

It's also worth pointing out that handedness is a spectrum rather than an absolute. Some people are less "handed" than others and can train their off-hand more easily.

In the case of a child forced to use their off-hand, a lot of factors come into play. There's the frustration of being prevented from doing things with their good hand, and the humiliation when they can't perform tasks as easily as their peers. If the child's handedness is repressed from a very young age, the neural pathways involved in fine motor skills don't develop correctly and the child will probably be put at a disadvantage for the rest of hir life. It's never healthy to force a kid to use their off-hand, and it's also totally pointless.

13:33 / 02.07.02

More half-remembered rumours: architecture and professional tennis have more than their fair share of left-handers. It's believed that this may be because left-handed peeps have a greater spacial awareness than right-handers.

13:38 / 02.07.02

It's also a well known fact that most Ninjas are left handed.

13:43 / 02.07.02

hrumph. before anyone starts with bloody ninja/pirate stuff here, i should let it be known that i have a fierce right hook!

14:19 / 02.07.02

If you've got a hook on your right, it's a good thing you're a lefty!

16:25 / 02.07.02

i think *boom* tish! is the appropriate response to that!

17:42 / 02.07.02

More half-remembered rumours: architecture and professional tennis have more than their fair share of left-handers. It's believed that this may be because left-handed peeps have a greater spacial awareness than right-handers.

I've got fucking awful spacial awareness & coordination. I can't hit a ball with a tennis racket at all (unless the ball's stationary on the ground and I bend down and hit it, but that would be silly).

23:39 / 02.07.02

I'm not a lefty now, because when I was in primary school the first teacher I had was mortified that I was left handed and made me write with my right hand. Nowadays I can't do anything with my left hand at all - worse than most people are with their off hand. Heaven knows what it did to my brain... I seemed to remember somewhere that left handed people are more creative and right handed people more practical? Or is that just urban-mythology?

00:32 / 03.07.02

In neurological parlance, what Mordant decribes as 'cross lateral' is more correctly described as 'contralateral' (as opposed to same side/same cerebral hemisphere, which is 'ipsilateral').

00:55 / 03.07.02

Contralateral it is, then.

All I know is that if we were to make an analogy to the Kinsey scale, I'm about a 2.5 dexternormatively speaking. I'm more ambidextrous than most people I know, and can print left-handed at about a 7 year-old level without any practice at all. I occasionally think I might have been steered away from sinister behavior by my parents, though, and wonder what life might be like if I'd been raised differently. In spite of being nominally right-handed, my left eye is dominant over my right and I was very confused during archery lessons until I figured that out. At this point, I think I'm limited to wondering, though - I don't know if I can overcome decades of training and practice to become actively equal-handed.

06:10 / 03.07.02

Another left hander...

Being left handed makes kungfu quite confusing. Its only taught right-handed, my poor brain keeps having to translate until it becomes habit.

My co-ordination has increased from this, however...

06:13 / 03.07.02

I thought it was fairly common to be able to write reasonably legibly (though much more slowly) with the non-favoured hand...

06:17 / 03.07.02

That last was directed at iszabelle, incidentally...

Fool - that's pretty crap though, no? I did kick-boxing, and the teachers made sure to explain the equivalent for whichever was your dominant hand. Thought that would be fairly standard practice really...

11:03 / 03.07.02

Another lefty here. They tried to make me write right-handed at school, but I'd already learned left-handedly at home, and I just ignored them (and they stopped when they realised the best they'd get out of my right hand was a kind of ass-backwards scrawl.)

I play guitar right-handed (although that means left hand on the fingerboard, right hand picking, which always seemed to me to be a lefthanded way of doing it.) Also mouse with my right. But otherwise I'm pretty left-hand dominant.

Dammit, lefties rock. We're smarter, faster, funnier, we have sex more frequently and experience more powerful orgasms, we have higher drug intake capacities, and we secretly rule the world. Oh, and we're very creative (see previous sentence.)

15:24 / 03.07.02

*raises left hand*

Yep, I'm a lefty, but I also use my right for most everything except writing. But my writing is pretty illegable when writing with my right hand. (It's generally pretty good with my left.) I don't turn the page sideways, as I've seen many lefties do. But I did teach myself mirror-writing when I was an adolescent (after I read that Leonardo Da Vinci, a lefty, wrote that way) & kept my journal in science class that way. The teacher got mad, but my mother stuck up for me, claiming it was a sign of creativity & expression. (Although I was probably just being a stubborn geek.)

I honestly can't remember ever being teased or persecuted for being a lefty. Nobody really ever seemed to care.

21:35 / 03.07.02

Well, I was born w/ left-handed tendencies and made to write right-handed. As a result, I was very poorly co-ordinated as a child. In fact, my dexterity was so shitty that I couldn't tie my shoes until I was in the 2nd grade. And no, it wasn't because I was stupid. I could fluently read those "Jack & Jill" books by the time I was in Kindergarden, so I wasn't completely slow. What really screwed me up was baseball, because the glove's on the recessive (or is it submissive?) hand versus the dominant throwing hand. I can remember a few times being so indecisive about which hand I should use to catch the ball that I failed to make the catch.

On a tangent, has anyone's signature or penmanship changed over the years? After all of these years of writing right-handed, I've finally come up w/ a style of writing that is not only legible (finally!) but also has a bit of distinction. Took long enough...

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:14 / 04.07.02

yup, me too.

and used to have an incredbily convulted way of writing where my wrist curved right round in a circle, over the previously written stuff (evolved from first learning to write with an ink pen, I think, after terms of producing blurry messes)

"Hadn't occurred to me that it would be the cause of my 'weird' handwriting. On the plus side, sport: baseball... it never occurs to anyone you're pitching differently to everybody else. "

god yeah, or in the crap girly version, rounders, where despite being a complete mong at all sports I was massively in demand for my left-handed batting, there being no fielders anywhere on that side.

and is it me, or does this seem to be quite a large number of leftiez for a reasonably small community?

*cue spooky music*
so what does it mean?????

15:21 / 04.07.02

It probably means your all lizards.

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