Comments on: “None of us could speak English”

by: naty

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:57:31 +0000

i am lefty, a fact i could not been more proud of. I have never had troubles at school or no one have ever tried to tight my left hand or shove things into my right when i grab it with the left hand. But those things did happened to my dad. When he was in school his teacher tight his left-hand to his back and forced him to write with the right-hand, and as a result of that my dad has a horrible handwriting and yes, you could say he is a bit traumatized by that fact. But neither him nor i have found more troubles with being a lefty, with scissors, knives, and the computer mouse, things weren’t exactly hard and i noticed i actually was having trouble with it until i read it on a web page, before that i never noticed anything much different, maybe because i don’t stare at people when they use any of those things to see if they or i am acting weird or different. On school i have a desk for lefties and all and all i find difficult is when i write next to someone else and my elbow hits with the other person’s elbow, and other minor problems i won’t really complain about cuz it will be stupid to make a big deal of something so small.
One thing i really did found annnoying, don’t know if anyone else ever had the same experience, but once i was all happy in a regular day, writing something at school, (we were sitting in small groups of four) and when i looked up from my paper i noticed no one else on my group was writing, just me, instead they were all staring at me, when i asked why they said they found funny the way i write, i ignored them and kept writing and still they were staring at me and they even start making comments about the way i turned the paper, or that sometimes i leaned too much to the front, and the way the side of my hand ends up all stained because i smudged what i write with the side of my hand and blah blah blah, it annoyed me, cuz yes i’m kind of different, but they were half-treating me as if i belonged to a circus, i only told them to shut their mouths, or change subject and write, cuz we, lefties, are differents, but that doesn’t make us circus freaks, we are nobody’s entertaiment.
Also, i have heard a lot of lefties complaining about some minor difficulties we have, or some things they blame about the simple fact you write with a different hand, but it is not a big issue, but nobody has insult me about it, and actually most of the time i forget about that small difference, most of the time i forget i do things differently, and i normaly don’t noticed much things, cuz well normally i don’t notcied much about anything, perhaps it’s just me.
But seriously stop complaining andblaiming things on being a lefty and take responsability about your own acts.
And just like Emiliy, i’m also so used to everything i don’t noticed the differences until i really think about them, and the things that should be different to us i don’t noticed half of the time, just til recently i realized that for most people it isn’t hard to cut things with a scissors, because for lefties the hand makes a shadow so we can’t see what we are cutting but i thought that shadow was made to everyone until recently

by: Emily

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:41:23 +0000

I was lucky. I am one of two lefties that we know of in my family, my cousin is also left handed. I did struggle when I was younger but mostly because my teachers were all right handed and couldn’t show me how to do things right handed. Writing, especially cursive writing, was difficult.
I did have one tacher for two years, she taught both grades 5 and 6, who was an artist and kept trying to teach me different ways to paint, she was a trained artist, and she didn’t figure out that I’m left handed until the last day of grade 6.
I found that without my teachers helping me figure out how to adapt what they teach in a right handed way, I would get frustrated and occasionally gave up, like violin and flute that I took through school.
I did become so used to everything being built for right handed people, that it’s not until I think about it do I notice how many things are so inconvenient.
In the town where I grew up, there was always this booth at the farmer’s market that had things built for lefties; notebooks, calculators, even clocks that ran counterclockwise. Whenever I tell my friends, they can’t comprehend a notebook with the coil on the opposite side or why I’d want a clock that was “useless”. I find that most of the time if someone finds out I’m left handed, I get a string of questions about everything I do in everyday life that they think might be hard for me.

by: BLAX

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:37:19 +0000

I’m not completely left handed. A couple years ago I found out I’m cross-dominant (for those of you who don’t know or can’t guess what it means, you’re on the internet, so just look it up). I never really gave much thought to left or right handedness. So when I started playing basketball, my shot form was horrible and the coach didn’t know what to do. So just as a joke a tried shooting left -handed for a little while, oddly enough it actually felt more comfortable. So I just went with it and now I’m actually a pretty good shooter. when i got to high school I tried to explain my case to the coach (because my dominant hand was still my right hand). he just nodded and didn’t seem to care. When the team did drills requiring us to use our dominant hands the coach still expected me to use my left hand even after I tried to explain it to him. he just told me he’d seen me shoot and that I was a lefty. I was forced to use my left hand (on a bright note I got pretty good with my left hand and now I don’t have a preference when it comes to basketball). So, in a way I kind of understand what lefties have to go through. Ironically my high school coach turned out to be a lefty… so what’s up with that?

by: Itxaso

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:53:43 +0000

I am also a lefty and nobody ever tried to force to change myself. On the contrary, I always felt happy or proud of being a lefty because it made me feel special, different (in a good sense) specially with my class mates. They couldn’t believe that I was able to do everything with my left hand and they used to treat me like the “skilled” one. When I used to play football with my friends (I was never very good at it, only average) I have to admit that I was quite a good goal scorer because the goal keeper didn’t expect me to kick the ball with my left leg. The little problems came when I started with my cello lessons. The cello (as most of the things in the world) are designed only for right-handed people and I had to learn how to pick the bow with my right hand. Actually, I was very clumsy and it took more than what is estimated to learn how to use properly a bow. That frustrated me a little bit as I couldn’t understand why did I have to do it that way but when I started to learn how to give musical sense with my left hand everything changed. My hand was very skillful when playing a melody. I am proud of being left-handed and I strongly believe that we should be treated equally. Teachers, parents, anyone who tries to change a left-handed into a right-handed is like trying to change that little girl into a boy, or vice-versa. Does it sound more ridiculous like that?

by: Ted

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:29:25 +0000

As a fellow lefty I am proud that every President since Richard Nixon has been a lefty except for the two duds in that group- Jimmy Carter and George W Bush. And both Obama and McCain are lefties.

by: Gina Land

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:29:41 +0000

I am happy to say I am a lefty. I did have a teacher slap my hand in school, but happily I remained a lefty. I am a music fanatic, I teach piano an most of the music teachers (guitar/piano etc) I know are lefties.
I have been doing my own research over the years, and I have found that lefties appear more emotional, hense in life experiences, they have a higher E.Q. awareness. Also, I work with foster children (I babysit them as a relief to their foster parents and them) I found the left handed children more emotionally devistated by the separation and loss. I theorize that over the years, this aparent emotional highteness leads eventually to higher EQ.
I think lefties (such as beethovan, mozart, ghandi) are more apt to buck the trends, go against the norm, possitive or negative.
Its interesting that for a living I teach piano, am an aromatherapist (smells) all related to areas of the right brain.
Written essays (language connections) have always been a breeze for me. I can write an 8 page essay in a few hours……..(did that last night)…how about you fellow lefties….what’s your occupation?

by: Jaimee Evans

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:39:42 +0000

I really admire left-handed people. I’m right handed but something about lefties fascinate me and I kind of want to be a lefty. Thats why I’ve been training myself to use my left hand as well as my right. Once I accomplish this I plan to use my left hand permanently. (i typed this whole thing with my left hand.)

by: maricon babol

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:26:47 +0000

I am so glad that I found a site that suited to my research paper about left handers

by: Colleen PIllar

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 04:31:16 +0000

Fellow Lefties, I salute you!
I am currently a psychology undergraduate student doing a little research for a paper I have to write for my Intergroup Relations class. Ultimately, the task at hand is for me to describe a social identity that I belong to, identify with, and value. Well, my choice of social identity is as a left-handed person!
I am not one of the numerous who experienced forced right-handedness, but I have always taken notice of the right-handed world we live in. I guess maybe this is why I really do value my left-handed social identity; although lacking any specific, logic-based reasoning as to why, us lefties have had to learn to over come some sort of physical obstacle, be it big or small, simply to navigate our day-to-day lives. Ultimately, I think we are the bigger, better people for it!
Debra Steele, if you are still active in this area of research, although I assume you have completed your dissertation work by now, I would love to be a participant, or even to hear how your study went.

by: Laura

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:27:15 +0000

I, too, was a corrected to right-handedness left-handed child, but never really knew how left-handed I was until the computer age! When I had to use a mouse for the first time, I found my hand-eye coordination so lacking that I could not smoothly use a mouse under any circumstances. I was provided with a track-ball and even that did not alleviate the situation. After changing my mouse orientation for a lefthander, I had no further problems. I AM A BORN LEFT-HANDER and to this day I am baffled at the ignorance showed me by (i) my parents, who believed that my left-handedness was a birth defect; (ii) the educated teachers, both Ursuline and Notre Dame nuns and lay teachers who had the audacity to declare my penmanship unworthy when written left-handed, for which I was subsequently punished; and (iii) the nun who (1) broke a finger on my RIGHT hand for “slovenly” penmanship and then (2) at a later time proceeded to break a finger on my LEFT hand after I had written my paper with my left hand. Please understand that my parents still to this day do not know about the fingers being broken, because it is easy to tape two fingers together to let the broken one heal and at the tender age of 9 I was smart enough to do this and neither of my parents noticed anything out of the ordinary. Today, they call this child abuse and the nun would be swiftly removed from the clasroom and prosecuted. What a change from the 1960’s!