A salute to my fellow left-hander, William
MANY people were surprised to realise Prince William is left-handed after he was filmed signing the proclamation document officially recognising his father Charles as King. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him that he is a left-hander like me. Living in a right-handed world is not easy. In exams, you have a limited time to answer questions and it is imperative to write quickly. Writing from left to right with the left hand, pushing the pen forward, not pulling it, is a slow and painful process. It is quite some challenge, I can tell you.
When you salute, wave or shake hands, you are expected to do so with the right hand. In order not to offend people and to conform to normal practice, left-handers have to put a check on their natural instinct when called on to perform these everyday greetings. They have to uninstinctively, awkwardly, raise their right hand. Tables are set for right-handed people. Is it any wonder that left-handers are at risk of dipping their cuffs in the soup or the gravy?
Can you imagine an orchestra with a mix of left-handed and right-handed violinists? It would be chaos. Musical instruments are designed and strung with right-handed people in mind. Why is it polite when accompanying a lady to keep her on your left? Historically, this was so a gentleman could unsheath his sword to defend her. But a left-hander who followed protocol and was called on to protect his sweetheart by drawing his sword would have seen her head disappearing over the nearest hedgerow!
In the cadets, I fired a .303 Lee-Enfield rifle, the weapon used by soldiers in World War II. I imagine that in the war, all the left-handers got shot dead. It is impossible to shoot a Lee-Enfield rifle with it pressed into the left shoulder, or open the bolt. If your leading eye is the right one, you can’t look down the sights.
The Latin word for left is sinister and this has had an effect on how lefthanders are seen. We are treated with suspicion, not to be trusted and to be given a wide berth because there is something not quite ‘right’ about us. Unlike others who deviate from the norm in different ways, we don’t complain. But we have our ways of getting one up on right-handers. ‘Lefties’ in tennis, and left-handed bowlers and batsmen in cricket, are wickedly difficult to play against.