PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/JARED GAB
Adam Brazil, Chanute senior, throws a football with his left hand. Left-handed athletes face more challenges because equipment is geared towards righties.
learning to write when they used their left hand.
Kerry Benson, professional-in-residence for the school of journalism, says her kindergarten and first grade teachers hit her on the left hand when she used it to write. Her teachers told her that her left hand was wrong, Benson says. During parent-teacher conferences, one teacher told Benson's mother that although her daughter was bright, she wouldn't succeed if she continued to write with her
left hand. "I thought I'd fall at life," Benson says.
She wanted to do well in school so she practiced using her right hand. But it wasn't that simple. She did everything as a left-handed person, and her body was conflicted. Left-handed people are always reminded that they're not like the majority of people because they're always adapting, she says.
By second grade, Benson consistently wrote with her right hand. She was able to
write with both hands until she was 20, when her left hand was crushed and she wore a cast for a year. Although Benson stopped writing with her left hand nearly 30 years ago, she doesn't consider herself right-handed. "I am left-handed," she says. "I write with my right hand, but I think with my left hand and that makes me a left-handed person."
Joanie Starks, Lawrence resident, experienced similar challenges in elementary school. Starks writes with her left hand but doesn't consider herself a true lefty. She says that her elementary school teachers didn't allow students to write with their left hands so she was forced to learn how to write with her right hand. Because she learned to use both hands early, Starks says she doesn't have typical lefty traits. She doesn't have a hook — a horizontal rather than vertical hand positioning — when she writes.
Junior high was the first time Starks was able to use her left hand without being punished. Ironically, she broke her left hand and had to use her right one until the left hand healed.
Although Starks had difficulties adhering to left-handed life, when her son was born, he naturally started using his left hand, but her husband trained him to be right-handed.
"Everyone tended to not want him to be left-handed," Starks says.
Her husband, expecting their son to play sports when he got older, didn't want to buy left-handed golf clubs, so when their son ate, used crayons or picked things up with his left hand, her husband would pull it away. "I wonder how many people do that — not wanting to have a left-handed in a right-handed world," Starks said. "If I could go back, I wouldn't have made him switch.
Sports
Handwriting wasn't the only place I had problems. Playing sports is a whole other evil. My right-handed cousins tried teaching me how to play softball. I had to throw and catch like a right-handed person because gloves for lefties were not only hard to find, but much more expensive. I learned how to throw like a right person, but never got the hang of batting.
During dance classes, I thought I was clumsy and uncoordinated. With wall-to-wall floor-length mirrors in the studio for everyone to see my every move, I stood out as pirouetted the wrong way and barely escaped colliding with the other ballerinas. We always began dance moves starting to the right, and I naturally spun in the opposite direction from everyone
else. Sometimes I would catch myself before I turned left and made a conscious effort to spin to the right with everyone else.
Lefties often have similar experiences with sports. Starks, a physical education teacher for Lawrence Public Schools, had trouble with athletics. When she was learning how to play softball, she didn't know which hand to put the glove on. She plays the field left-handed but bats right-handed. Because of her experience, Starks says she encourages her students to experiment with both sides.
Finding a dominant side to play sports can be confusing for left-handed people. Kati Purmort, Colorado Springs, Colo., graduate student, says she had trouble adapting to right-handed equipment. She remembers playing catch with her father and having to use a right-hander's glove because that was all he had. She never learned the correct way to throw a ball because she says she was using the wrong hand."To this day I throw a ball terribly because I was never able to practice with the right glove and learn how to do it right."Purmort says.
Purmort managed to overcome the challenges of being a left-handed athlete. Purmort, who played for KU's soccer team while she was an undergraduate student, says was the only player who could kick a
soccer ball equally as well with both feet.
In volleyball, the other team didn't expect her to hit with her left hand so they didn't block her correctly. Purmort says she had an advantage in soccer and volleyball because she was left-handed and left-footed.
Despite my sixth-grade handwriting hurdles, I've managed life just fine. In fact, my left-handed, right-brained thinking suits me well in my creative pursuits of magazine and newspaper design. While it does get annoying to wash off the ink stains from writing and to arrange my placement at the dinner table to avoid hitting people, it's something I've learned to live with. Although the left-handed population won't soon become a majority, the world owes a lot to the lefties who have not only adapted, but excelled in acting, writing and musical compositions.
So on behalf of lefties everywhere, I hold my head high. We've learned to adapt to notebooks, guitars and can openers. We can wangle a righty desk and wrong-handedly maneuver a computer mouse with equal ease. And we gave the world a show about nothing, the political sex scandal of the century and Moonlight Sonata.
So on behalf of all lefties.
You're welcome, mankind.