Lefty

Happy Left Handers' Day!

I'm proud to be a lefty although being left handed hasn't always been easy and has caused me adapt to a right handed world.

When I was young my mom gave me a crayon in my right hand. I quickly switched it to my left and began to color. She took the crayon and put it in my right hand again. I switched to left. After this happened a few times she said "hmph- you must be left handed"

I have an aunt on my mom's side of my family and an uncle on my dad's side who are left handed- they are my closest lefty relatives.

I'm grateful that I don't live in the day when they forced you to write with your right hand no matter what. That would feel so awkward! Actually when they did this it increased the person's chance of being dyslexic or developing a stutter.

In school I had issues using those safety scissors. I could never get them to work in my left hand. If I switched them to my right I could get them to cut yet I couldn't cut straight.

The biggest annoyance in school was that since my hand slides from left to right over the words I write the entire side of my left hand was often covered in pencil lead (until I started taking half a sheet of paper and laying my hand on it as I wrote- helped most of the time) Writing on chalk boards or dry erase boards were also tricky.

Many of my childhood friends were left handed and several of my adult friends (I guess we had more in common with our personalities) Both dentists I work with are also left handed.

From how I swing a bat to where I sit at a dinner table- I have to do things a little different. I definitely have the traits that lefties commonly have since we use the right side of our brains more (art, music, etc)


Here are some interesting lefty facts :)

-We make up roughly 10% of the population.

-There is a high tendency in twins for one to be left handed

-LH (left handers) adjust more readily to seeing underwater (ok, that's random)

-LH excel more in tennis, swimming, baseball and fencing.

-LH are more flexible (I don't know if they mean physically or if they are resilient because they have learned to adapt more readily?)

-LH are better at 3D perception and thinking (maybe why I love designing mental worlds/houses/buildings when I read)

-4 out of 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were LH

-Live on average 9 years less than right handed people (yikes!)

-Several studies have concluded that there are more LH's with higher IQs

-Better at multitasking (yep- sometimes I end up doing about 5 different things at once)

-Harder time rolling their tongue than righties. (yeah- I had issues with that in Spanish class)


Famous Lefties:

-Presidents Reagan, Bush (H.W.), Clinton and Obama
-Joan of Arc
-Julius Caesar
-Henry Ford
-Helen Keller
-A bunch of English royalty (Queen Victoria, Prince Charles, Prince William to name a few)
-John F Kennedy Jr
-David Letterman
-Jay Leno
-Jack the Ripper (yikes)
-Bart Simpson (haha)
-Natale Cole
-Kurt Cobain
-Ringo Starr
-Dan Aykroid
-Tim Allen
-Carol Burnett (awesome!)
-Charlie Chaplain
-Tom Cruise
-Robert DeNiro
-Whoopie Goldberg
-Cary Grant
-Jim Henson
-Larry Bird
-Angelina Jolie
-Julia Roberts
-Diane Keaton

Just to name a few :)

Any left handers out there?