Raise your right arm .. or is that the left?
ALL those who are excited by the prospect of International Left-Handed Day, please raise your right arm. Thought so, I’m not alone.
But as a “leftie” myself, I should party with others who share the trait – 50 per cent of cats, Diego Maradona, Justin Bieber and Bart Simpson.
That would’ve been one hell dinner party.
If I do miss the festivities on August 13 it won’t be my fault. The celebration of all things left-handed clashes with Blame Someone Else Day.
I am also busy preparing for National Failures Day just 48 hours later.
As a failure of many years standing – a teacher told me I’d amount to nothing staring out of windows all day (should’ve seen his face when I handed him that McDonald’s!) – I find the occasion something of a letdown.
National Failures Day usually fails to excite. Therefore, it ticks all the boxes.
Throw a really good party and you’ve let down all the other failures. But, then, by failing the failures are you not cementing your own reputation as a failure? of a
It’s a conundrum, it really is.
I come from the dark days when lefties suffered open discrimination, with guest houses displaying signs that declared: “No dogs, no gypsies, no left-handers”. If you were ethnic, itinerant and left-handed, purchasing a pint was near impossible.
Over half a century ago there were no such things as left-handed fountain pens, scissors and toothbrushes. Now, there are even left-handed hammers, which is another puzzle – where are the left-handed nails?
Time and again, my left-handed uncle had to endure jobs he’d applied for awarded to lesser qualified righthanded people.
He was a ventriloquist. “No-one will pay to see someone’s left hand shoved up a dummy,” a Northern club boss candidly told him.
We’ve had a bad rap since Biblical times and beyond. “Left” is a mutation of the Anglo Saxon word “lyft” – weak or broken.
The Good Book makes 100 positive references to right hands, while the left is mentioned only 25 times and all of those are negative. Frankly, I don’t think it matters which hand you use to smite someone with.
The Devil is always portrayed as a southpaw, which is disappointing. I’ve always thought the Prince of Darkness, with all his malevolent powers, should be ambidextrous. He could’ve mastered that, surely?
Thankfully, the days of right supremacy – if you’ve got long arms, it’s far right supremacy – have long gone. We have come out of the closet.
“I’m left-handed and proud of it,” I shouted in the office.
“Put it there, mate,” said a colleague, adding: “No, the other hand.”
There is even a London shop that only sells left-handed office equipment and utensils. When I visited, business was very brisk; people were grabbing things off the shelf with both hands, but mostly favoured the left.
Left-Handed Day is an acknowledgement of our emancipation.
As one person proudly posted on twitter: “Here’s to all of us who had to try to use one of those chairs with a table attached to one side. The wrong side.”
Another typed: “Shout out to all the left-handed heroes, with ink on their hands and love in their hearts.”
One hardline leftie proudly proclaimed: “To my fellow southpaws out there, keep holding those scissors weird. Be proud to have pencil lead and pen ink on the side of your hand. Don’t be ashamed to bump elbows with people at the dinner table. No can opener is going to tell you who to be. We will survive.”
But not as long as right-handed people, according to this paper’s digital kid sister BirminghamLive, in an “11 things you didn’t know about lefthanders” feature.
“According to a study lefties live around nine years less than their right-handed counterparts,” the website reveals.
We are apparently more prone to becoming alcoholics – despite struggling with right-handed bottle openers – and more likely to suffer allergies and migraines.
Surprisingly, we also hit puberty later, which, with a dearth of lefthanded razors, is no bad thing.
On the plus side, lefties are, the article assures, more creative despite smudging pictures and handwritten prose. It adds: “Tests conducted by New York researchers found that there were more left-handed people with IQs over 140 than right-handed people.
Famous left-handed intellectuals include Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin.”
The trait is shared by a host of showbiz stars, the long list topped by Sir Paul McCartney who posted: “Hey all you lefties, have a Happy Left-Handers Day.”
The Left-Handers Club has urged members to celebrate the day by making right-handed relatives and colleagues perform daily tasks with their other mitt.
Sound advice. My wife doesn’t hit half as hard with the left.
The club calls on right-handers to show support by having the computer mouse on the left of the keyboard and writing in a ring binde or spiral bound notepad with your left hand – the binding hurts your wrist.”
Such are the pitfalls we lefties face, without protest, each day.