Editor's Blog May 15th 2012
Left Handed?
Did you know that left-handed people only make up about ten percent of the population?
But it seems to me that I have a high proportion of left-handed friends, with more than half of those lefties being women. I tried to make a correlation of all this and I am left scratching my head. In reading I have noticed that left-handedness in women is rarer than in men by almost four percent, so why do I have so many female friends that are?
I am not alone in my inability to rationalize this. Scientists have also been perplexed and the mystery surrounding left-handed people has led to a whole plethora of spurious assumptions, such as links to criminality, dyslexia, schizophrenia, devil worship and witchcraft.
In the English language, the word ‘left’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Lyft’, which means weak or broken. Phrases in English suggest a negative view of left-handedness, for example ‘a left handed compliment is actually an insult’.
As far as I know, most of the southpaws I know are not into sacrificing the odd goat to Beelzebub, or dancing around naked atop a windy mountain at midnight with a bunch of other like minded ladies, nor are they criminal in any way, much the opposite.
What I have noted is that almost all the left handed people I know are very good at sports, art, music and intellectual reasoning. Could that be the attraction?
Further reading into the subject of female left handedness had me reading a paper that on spelling and grammar alone should have made me stop reading it, but I did and it went on to say that left handed women use more of the left brain than the right brain, making them highly aggressive and the reason they are left handed is because they have daddy issues.
This is the curse of being left-handed; being misunderstood because of hundreds of years of a lack of understanding that the brain works in two different hemispheres.
I tried yesterday to be left handed all day and found it to be extremely difficult, especially mundane things that could turn nasty real quickly, like wiping your arse or trying to cut paper with scissors or drinking a hot coffee.
To all the lefties I know. You adapt to tool usage, writing implements, musical instruments, driving vehicles and all the other things that are manufactured solely for the use of right-handed people; you are creative and intelligent in most cases. Above all else, at least the ones that I know you are funny and that’s why I like you.
Ed.
