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It's a Heard of the Sistine Chapel?
Ever made an ethical decision?
Seen Pretty Woman?
Thank a lefty.
left hander's world,
righties are just living in it
by Jacky Carter
If I believed all the theories, I am the way I am because I didn't have a successful toilet training experience. Or I was traumatized during childbirth. Or I suffered brain damage in my mother's womb. I'm evil, incompetent and awkward. I'll probably die seven to nine years before my friends, and I'm more likely to suffer from schizophrenia or alcoholism while I'm still alive. All this just because I left-handed.
Comprising 10 to 15 percent of the world's population, lefties are a minority. And while elementary school teachers aren't tying down children's left hands when they try to write with them anymore, lefties are still treated as if they were defective.
Despite the challenges of using scissors, spiral-bound notebooks and musical instruments, leftoies like Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey and Jimi Hendrix went on to become prodigies in their respective fields.
point in my life when I was still being graded on my handwriting. With a grade of S being satisfactory, my s o u t h p a w s c r a w l received an S-. Mrs.
I never thought of myself as different until sixth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Robinson, wasn't too fond of my handwriting. More than once, she told my parents about how I could improve my penmanship. She wasn't suggesting that I learn to use my right hand, but my handwriting was too slanted. Too messy. Too
hard to read. This was at a point in my life when I was
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Robinson told my mom that she was only looking out for my best interests, as good handwriting was a habit we all need to learn early on. My life's penmanship was at stake.
The definitions of "left" give plenty of reasons to have a negative association. The first definition of "left-handed" is using the left hand more habitually than the right, according to Merriam-Webster Online.
The perils of a left-handed life are more than sitting at right-handed desks and accumulating ink on your hand from writing across a page. The Left-Handers Day Web site, www.lefthandersday.com, conducted a survey about life as a lefty. About 85 percent of the respondents consider themselves clumsier than right-handed people. Nearly three-quarters said they had experienced difficulty in school because they were left-handed.
Weli,duh.
Left-handed linguistics
From using household appliances to playing sports, lefties are constantly adapting to a right-hand world. And because lefties are far outnumbered and misunderstood, people throughout time have pegged them as evil or incompetent.
But the rest of the entries portray a serious deficiency. Clumsy, Awkward. Dubious. Counterclockwise. Not exactly pleasant connotations. Antonyms? Dexterous and sincere.
Even in other languages, "left-handed" carries sinister connotations. In German, Greek, Italian and Spanish, the phrase translates to awkward, ill-omened, crooked and creepy. The words awkward and gawky come from the word "awk," which means "from the left."
The word right, on the other hand, is associated with being correct, proper, appropriate and normal. He arrives right on time. She is in the right mind. The doll sat upright.
Although research hasn't pinpointed what makes a person prefer one hand over another, that hasn't stopped researchers from contemplating the causes. One theory suggests trouble during birth causes children to become left-handed. Although some research backs brain damage as a determining factor in handedness, the theory fails to explain why the number of left-handed people hasn't decreased despite medical advances.
Linguistically, lefties don't get a break. But despite the connection to negativity, lefties have gone on to do great things. Leonardo da Vinci jump-started every principle of modern science. Aristotle pioneered an entire system of ethics still taught on college campuses today. And Julia Roberts consistently tops Forbes' annual list of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.
Causes and correlations
Tests can determine hand preference based on how you perform certain tasks. The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory assesses which hand you prefer to use to write, brush your teeth, open a box and other tasks and whether you can use your other hand as well. You can take the test for yourself at http://airto.loni.ucla.edu/BMCweb/Consent/edinburgh.html.
The New England Journal of Medicines suggests a simpler approach to determining handedness. You can find your dominant hand by looking at the base of your thumbsails and seeing which one is wider and more square.
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