Being Left Handed and Living in a Right Handed World

I am left-handed. I can tell you from personal experience that being left-handed forces you to learn to do things right-handed. I was a machinist for ten years and worked on automatic machines. They are all set up to cater to right-handed people. I had to adapt to doing many things right-handed that did not feel comfortable at the beginning, but I adapted.

It also has made me adapt to other things. I enjoy golf. When I was a kid, I started golfing and could not afford or even easily find left-handed golf clubs. I learned to golf right-handed and could not golf left-handed now if I wanted to.

Being left-handed is a unique thing; about 10% of the population are left-handed. Being left-handed occurs slightly more often in boys than it does in girls. Left-handed people have been discriminated against in the past and forced to change, fortunately this is not so anymore. People used to think that there was something wrong with kids who were left-handed so they would be forced to become right-handed to be the same as everyone else.

Some things that right-handed people never think about. Things like being lefties, your hand sliding across where you have written smearing the ink or turning your hand black from a pencil. When you pick up a coffee mug with your left hand the picture faces away, when writing in a notebook, the wire binding is under the side of your hand, golf clubs, baseball gloves, hockey sticks for lefties are harder to find.

Most semi-automatic and automatic rifles and shotguns eject the shell right in front of your face, some foreign guns eject them backwards as well, so the shells will hit you in the face. You can buy left-handed guns, but they are hard to find, and much more expensive. There are many other things that lefties just must deal with in a right-handed world.

The reason some people are left-handed has puzzled scientists for many years. Some think that it is because left-handed people use both sides of their brains to control basic functions, while right-handed people only use the right side of their brain for the same functions. This may explain why we do things left-handed, but it doesn’t explain why we use both sides of our brains.

Others think it is environmental, but that has mostly been proven wrong. People such as myself who are left-handed, I had no one to learn being left-handed from. My family members and people that I spent any time with were right-handed so that theory does not work.

There are some advantages to being left-handed that include being smarter and more creative than right-handed people. Many ancient people held left-handers in high regard, probably because they were different. Most lefties have learned by necessity to do many things right-handed.

Lefties do some things right-handed normally, whereas almost no right-handed people don't do anything left hand. Most left-handed people can write backwards and or upside down easily, very few right-handed people can do this. Left-handers even have their own day; Aug 13^th is international left-handers' day.

There are also some big disadvantages such as, many power tools and firearms are dangerous to use left-handed. Left-handers are also forced to learn to do many things right-handed because they have no choice. There are also some studies that show that lefties tend to die at an earlier age.

There are thousands of the most creative and most talented people who are or who were left-handed, some examples are Presidents, Obama, Bush, Reagan, Ford, and Clinton, Truman, Hoover, and Garfield. Other great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, Ben Franklin, Ramses ll, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, and many more.

Being left-handed is different and unusual but being left-handed is not a terrible thing. Many of the top leaders and artists of all time were left-handed, and many of the great people of the future will be left-handed.

Research has shown that lefties perform better at fast or difficult tasks like video gaming, and flying fighter jets.

Five of the last 8 presidents are left-handed.

Four of the 5 designers who designed the Mac computer were lefties.

Ben Franklin was left-handed.

Men are twice as likely as women to be left-handed.

The Incas from ancient Peru believed that being left-handed was a sign of good luck.

There are also some not so good things.

Stuttering and dyslexia are more common among lefties.

Lefties tend to live 9 years left than right handers.

Left handers are 33% more likely to be alcoholics.

Lefties are more prone to allergies and asthma.

The Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper were both left-handed.