Handy way to offend
This ‘lefty’ mum has had it with people criticising left handers such as her son
DESPITE MY LITTLE ‘PROBLEM’ I HAVE MANAGED TO BLEND IN WITH SOCIETY JUST FINE AS A LEFTY.
WHEN I was five, my parents were called in to school for an “urgent meeting” with my new kindergarten teacher.
“Mum and dad, there is something wrong with your daughter,” my parents remember her saying.
Worried, my parents quizzed the teacher about this “serious problem” they had discovered in my first days at school.
“Your daughter writes with her left hand,” she answered.
My parents were stumped. What? That’s it?
“So let her write with her left hand,” they responded.
That was some 30 years ago. And while we have welcomed our first African American US president, our first female Australian prime minister, and have said “yes” to gay marriage, it seems little has changed when it comes to the warped, old-school views about our dear little lefties of the world.
I discovered this view once again with my own child after a visit to a close relative of ours.
Settling in for a cuppa, I got out some crayons and colouring books for my children to entertain themselves. Looking lovingly at my children as they coloured quietly, I noticed said relative had a horrified look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering if she would prefer them running around in their usual crazy way.
“He’s left-handed?” She asked, pointing to my five-year old son.
“Yes .... ?” I answered, albeit a little puzzled.
“You need to stop that. Take the crayon out of his hands and show him how to do it properly,” she said.
Turning red and refraining myself from answering how I really wanted to, I answered, “Oh there’s no need. He IS doing it properly.”
Needless to say, the conversation ended there. But not after I got a lecture about him starting big school next year and how it’s important he stops that bad habit.
Here’s a fun fact: Barack Obama is left-handed. So too is comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Microsoft giant Bill Gates, and actress Julia Roberts. Even Leonardo Da Vinci was a lefty. Yes, the Mona Lisa was painted with a left hand... shock horror!
Why do we need to make a big deal about what hand people want to write with?
Is it because it’s “different”?
Is it because you think the brain is giving them the wrong message? Is it because you didn’t? Or is it because you think everything they use from here on, like scissors, will need to be “special left-handed” ones you won’t be able to find anywhere?
Because I’ll stop you right there. Despite my little “problem” I have managed to blend in with society just fine as a lefty. I haven’t needed to use special scissors, I play tennis just fine with both hands.
While most people in society don’t see a left-handed person as a huge deal, it is often the first observation that is made when a child picks up a pencil.
Despite our best intentions and innocent observations, it is a comment a lot of people say and it needs to stop.
Whether a person favours their right hand or their left, and what this reveals about brain function, has been studied for at least 150 years. And in all of those years, researchers still don’t understand why about 10 per cent of the Aussie population turn out to be lefthanded. It could be genetics, it could be the way their brain is wired, it could simply be that the object they want is closer to that hand. No study can really tell us for sure.
But what we can tell you is that left-handed people are completely normal and shouldn’t be made to feel different or be excluded in any way – particularly when they’re five years old.