Today is my day off, after what feels like a long week at work. That isn’t to say that work is dull, but having 5 days of work and little time to fit everything in, means that I now have one day off in which I have to cram all of my volunteering, driving lessons and any activity that does not require me wearing PJs around the house. I’m not complaining though. My boredom bandwidth was nearly reached while I was at home all day, and so getting out to meet people, serve customers and watch a milk float speed down the dual carriageway on my way to work is mightily entertaining.
It’s true about the milk float by the way. I don’t know what currently scares me more: watching it take on junctions and roundabouts, or getting caught behind it (at its full speed of 20mph), and then crawling into work.
However, because I now have at least three hours to kill before I go out driving with my folks, I decided to read up on my cack handed.
Y’see, because I’m left-handed…
*waits for stunned silence*
but while I’m ciotógach, I have never really considered the implications of it. I am the only sinister (check your latin verbs) person in my family, bar a Great Aunt who was forced to write like everyone else in the 1930s. As a child, my Mum was wise enough to buy me umpteen pairs of lefty scissors, but I lost them so often, that I eventually started using rightys. Growing up, I learnt how to eat right-handed as I watched my family doing so, and even taught myself to knit and crochet right-handed as the left-handed diagrams made no sense. Even now, I tend to use tennis rackets right-handed, so it’s easier for people to throw the balls at me (I miss regardless of what hand I play with), and I find it slightly easier to play Guitar Hero as a right-handed person as I used to play the violin. The violin does not give a shit as to what hand you write with, as you can only play it in one manner. Consequently, I can press buttons and pretend that I’m at Wembley regardless of where the neck is.
Ending up with my palm covered in ink in exams and being given extra handwriting tasks by my Mum to improve my cursive (as I went through at least 5 different handwriting styles from when I was 11-13) is hardly anything worth writing a miserable childhood biography about, but that is the limit that being a south paw set me back.
It never struck that any problems I have had learning stuff is because I write differently. I never thought that I was developmentally or academically different, but will admit that I thought I could maybe give it a (ambidextrous) thumbs up for being more creative, as it uses slightly different points of the brain. Consequently, discovering that there was so much available to help left-handed people write and draw was a bit of a comforting surprise. I particularly found that the left-handed notepads and rulers useful, and they strike me as a beautifully simple idea. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of this would have helped me in some way, or if it would be fairly presumptuous to think that the numbers going the wrong/right way on a ruler stopped from understanding maths. Still, it’s nice to be in a distinguished minority.
Posted by Localfreak on March 24, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Lefties Unite!
I cannot blame the majority of my failures of co-ordination on being left-handed, though I had at least two teachers who refused to teach me in needlework because of that. The rest is just the dyspraxia.
I come from a Long Line of Lefties, though. Mostly. Okay. So Nanny is, and out of her seven children 2 (actually maybe 3…) are and I’m the child of one of those two so. Nanny was rulered often for writing with her left hand, but in the end her handwriting and drawing are so excruciatingly neat with her left that the nun’s sensibly gave up on the whole ‘you must write RIGHT’ approach