In kindergarten and throughout elementary school, I found out that I wasn't like the other children: I discovered an abnormality that only I and a few other kids had. This is something that wasn't tolerated many years ago, especially in catholic schools. I was terribly, horribly different from the other children: I wrote with my left hand.
To those who don't know, left-handed people are very similar to right-handed people. We are virtually the same except that lefties' dominant hand are their left hand, while righties' use their right. Being a lefty living in a righty world, we come across daily difficulties that we must learn to cope with, that right-handed people take for granted. Here are 5 everyday tasks that left-handed people struggle with.
1. Using Scissors- Any left-handed person will agree, using regular scissors can be a pain in the butt. The entire process of cutting anything with a pair of scissors is a real pain for lefties. Whenever I use a pair of right-handed scissors, which are most scissors, my hand always hurts and aches afterwards because the handle holes dig into my lefty fingers. Plus, I'm lucky if I can cut a straight line in one shot. Detail and precision cutting becomes all the more difficult when a left-handed person is stuck using right-handed scissors. Oh, and don't even think about trying to switch hands and have a lefty cut with their right hand: the job will be sloppy at best. (Maybe that's just me: I stink at scissors.)
2. Bumping Elbows- If you're right-handed and don't know what this means, you have obviously never sat to the left of a lefty while they wrote or ate something. Bumping elbows is that awkward situation when a left-handed person is sitting just a little too close to a right-handed person on their left, and both accidentally keep bumping elbows together, while writing, or even eating. For right-handed people, this is a once in a while situation: sure its annoying when it happens, but it only happens every so often to the average righty. Yet to the average lefty, on the other hand, (Get it?), this is certainly not a scarce occurrence. It's all the damn time! I frequently get nudged while I'm writing, and accidentally draw a squiggly line across the page. I can't begin to explain how annoying this is. Bumping elbows is a thing left-handed deal with constantly and just have to cope with.
3. Using Mice- Not the furry little creatures mind you, I'm talking about a computer mouse. This is a weird one, because a lot of left-handed people can and choose to use a mouse with their right hands, including me. This is because when I was in elementary school, the years I first found out about being a lefty, I had a computer learning class that taught us how to properly operate a computer. My teacher demonstrated the 'proper' way of using a mouse and when I tried, I used my left hand. The teacher came over to me and told me how wrong that was, and that if I ever wanted to use a computer the right way, (Get it?), I needed to use my right hand for the mouse. So I made myself hold and use the mouse in my right hand. Even though I may not be one of them, there are lefties out there that continue the fight the system, and use the mouse with their left hands. To all of those people, good on you.
4. Handshaking, Saluting, and other Motions- Alright, everyone gets moments when a very known and established thing is just forgotten for a small period of time, just enough to make a fool out of yourself. This has unfortunately happened to me on more than one occasion, with me forgetting to use the right hand for specific motions and greetings. A proper handshake is always used with the right hands of each person, but if you're a forgetful lefty like I am, that is not always how it goes. There have been many times when I stuck out my left hand, only to be stuck with a confused, and sometimes ticked off, right handed person. This also happened once when I was younger, during the pledge of allegiance and saluting someone. I would involuntarily place my left hand over my heart for the pledge, and use my left hand to salute someone in the military, only to be confronted and asked to please use the right hand. The incident was embarrassing to say the least.
5. The Many Problems With Writing- Saving the best for last, here are the many problems that left-handed people have with writing. I don't even know where to start!
Lefties are notoriously known with having big smudge marks from rubbing the side of the left hand against the written papers as they are writing. Not only is this a sure-fire way to spot a lefty, its also a really annoying mess. Both the hand and the paper gets smudged and sloppy.
Being a lefty, I prefer to never ever write in a binder. This is because of those big awful binder rings that gets so much in the way of writing. Right-handed people can use binders with big rings fine, but a lefty would much rather rip out the paper instead.
Then finally, one of the last problems lefties have with writing are school desks. Technically speaking, there should always be at least three left-handed desks in each classroom, but, let's be real, there usually never is. Classrooms usually have one desk for people like me, two if we're lucky. If there happens to be more left-handed students in the class than actual lefty desks, then it quickly becomes a fight for the seats. This happens more in college because for some reason unbeknownst to me, college desks are a heck of a lot smaller than any desk in high school. To sum it up, writing is not always peaches and cream.
To all the right-handed people out there reading this, I hope that now you understand just some of the daily struggles that left-handed people go through just to perform the same everyday tasks that you do without really thinking.
To all the left-handed people out there reading this, we may be the minority of dominant hands, but there is one thing that I know for sure: we will always continue to do the same work as right-handed people. No matter if it is harder to perform as a left-handed individual, the work will get done, and the work will be great.
