Sometimes it’s hard to be a left-handed in right-handed world
One of the world’s largest minorities, left-handers have been stigmatized for hundreds of years. Left-handedness is far less common than right-handedness. Left-handed people are more skilful with their left hands when performing tasks. Though genetic factors do have some impact the studies suggest that approximately 10% of the world population is left-handed. Cross-dominance or Mixed-handedness is the change of hand preference between tasks.
Some scientists believe that left-handed people are competent of a wider scope of thinking a theory that explains the high percentage of Nobel Prize winners, writers and painters who are left-handed.
Not only this, the wedding rings worn on the third finger of the left hand originated with the Greeks and Romans, who wore them to fend off evil associated with the left-hand.
But thanks to years of mocking and teasing there is a list of famous fellow lefties that to reveal to people when you are being ridiculed. You love telling everyone that five out of the last eight US presidents write with their left-hand- Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Apart from them, Leonardo Da Vinci-Artist, Sanjiv Kumar-Actor, Pele-Footballer, Neil Armstrong-Astronaut, Marie Curie-Scientist, Aristotle-Philosopher were also left-handed.
Now looking different has become a fashion and everyone wants to look different while earlier left-handedness was considered a disability and children were forced out of the habit. The synonymous used for the left are also like absent, gone, missing, and not here. Parents too have stopped objecting to the left-handedness as it affects the mental growth of the children.
There are a number of pluses and minuses being a left-hander. From scissors and smudged ink, spiral-bound notebooks to impossible-to-use tin openers, the lefties’ struggle are genuine. Another bad connotation is left-hand shakes are a sign of disrespect. This derives from the Middle Ages where people used to use their left hand to wipe after going to the toilet and offer the right hand for greeting people. Therefore, it would have been considered unhygienic to prefer your left hand.
Similarly, at public places, you will spend your life bumping elbows with right-handed folk. You no longer bother apologizing; you just throw up your left hand, point to it and shrug.
For left-hander characters in the film, it is very difficult to change all the sets which are always the set-up for a right-hander and it is very time-consuming for taking a shot without changing the settings as the actions performed are embarrassing.
But among the few advantages of being left-handed are – they are likely to be more visual than language-based, making them ideal for artistic pursuits. It does get annoying that even now people think being left-handed is something to poke fun at and you are treated as little different by your nearest and dearest.
Frankly speaking, I being a partially left-handed too look different at a party though everyone is used to my left-handedness. But when I attended a marriage party of one of my close friend along the back, the newly wedded couple was left handed and looking different from the party. It was also luckily International Left-Hander’s Day – August 13.
Later on, when I had a round of the Banquet Hall and started counting the left-handers just for fun-sake and it was a coincidence with the international day as I found there were exactly 13 numbers of left-handers including the newly wedded couple, who was going to live in a right-handed world.
Things are different today but the world is still designed for right-handed people and the reason stated is that the left-handed people have more accidents is because they are clumsy. But it could be due to the fact that they live in the right-handed world. You will agree that sometimes it’s really hard for left-handed to live in the right-handed world.
Over to right-handers!