You can be right but not the best
Arather charming man told me, while we were chatting about religion, that ‘‘sinister’’ means to the left.
I guess that also implies that ‘‘sin’’ and ‘‘sinner’’ come from the root word ‘‘sinister’’, or perhaps vice versa. Potatoes potah-toes, tomatoes tomaytoes.
To be lefthanded was always the dream. Being right-handed seemed so ordinary. It’s like O+ blood. So very normal.
I have a B+ blood type and for ridiculous reasons
I’m proud of being in that small percentile. As though being slightly different means I get God points.
Back to the left. I certainly swing left politically, believing society and the group wellbeing are both paramount to the survival of the human race. Anyway, being a Bernie Sanders fan-girl precludes me from any claim to flying business class on the right wing. As a kid I earnestly desired, and still desire, to be left-handed.
Many a United States president has been left-handed, even the right-minded leaders of the United States. Oh, and there we have it again: ‘‘right’’ minded. Right will always be right I suppose, but Lefties are by far the coolest of cool.
Surely I’m not the only child
(adult) that has practised for hours with the left hand, trying to get the brain capable of doing anything with that utterly useless left hand.
The truth is I struggle to do most things with my right hand. I struggle to know what direction I’m ever headed (figuratively and literally). Walking and eating are impossible. Finding my way through a maze? An eternal nightmare.
So why the desire to be lefthanded? What makes the lefthanded, left-footed, periscopepeering, human way cooler than any of us ‘‘regulars’’? Is it the sinister element of it all? Is it the awkward angles they take? Why are some of the greatest leaders and artists of all time left-handed?
My God, I hope Bernie is left-handed. I’m too scared to look.
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were said to be left-handed, and Adolf Hitler righthanded. What did that tell you? So many great chefs are also lefthanded. My sister easily glided between both, as does one of my sons. Both gifted artists and in my sister’s case a scientist, in my son’s, a brilliant natural athlete. Why am I so doomed to be ‘‘right’’ and ordinary?
Maybe then, perhaps, because for centuries we’ve generally considered anyone different to be sinister, wrong in the head, ‘‘and of the devil’’? If you refuse to be part of the consensus then you immediately become part of the sinister crowd. To have a different way of doing things or expressing yourself makes you one of the sinners. The 10 per cent of this world who take in the ordinary and common, then look at it from a different perspective, are somehow to be treated with suspicion.
I wanted so badly to be left-handed and deny my right, but as with sexuality it’s impossible to train yourself to be anything but.
So you exceptional lefties, I salute you. With my right hand naturally, and I will continue to feel creatively inferior. I’ll just flash my blood donor card that shows my vaguely odd B+ identification and attempt to drive in the ‘‘correct’’, not ‘‘right’’, direction (there appears to be a left-wing agenda here, but honestly I just long to be one of the cool kids).
So you exceptional lefties, I salute you. With my right hand naturally, and I will continue to feel creatively inferior.