Friday, May 15, 2009

To be a Lefty

A few weeks ago, my friend Haley asked me if it's difficult to drive with my right foot pushing the pedals since I'm left-handed.

"Not really," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I was trying to do it today, just to see what it'd be like, and it's really hard"

Two things went through my mind at that point: my friend is really weird for doing such a thing, and that I'd never really thought about whether or not it'd be easier for me to drive using my left foot. It makes sense that it would, since I kick with my left foot, and do most things with my left appendages, but it wasn't something that had ever really crossed my mind.

"It doesn't really make a difference to me," I said, "because I guess I've just been conditioned to drive with my right foot, and I've never known any different. Kind of like Amish people, or those really religious folk who refuse to have sex before they get married."

This weird conversation got me to thinking about what it means to be a lefty, if anything at all. It's an odd thing, because I've always taken pride in being a left-handed person, but I don't know why. I did nothing to influence whether or not I would be one, and I assume I was just born that way. There's no conceivable reason that this makes me better--or worse--than anyone who is right-handed, because it's just the hand that I do things with.

It does, however, make me a little bit different, and I think I take pride in being left-handed because I'm sort of bitter about it. To be frank, being a lefty can suck dick, because like anybody who is different or is a minority, we are discriminated against. Not in any hardcore way, like apartheid or anything like that, just in ways that are more annoying and inconvenient than anything.

The one that seems to haunt me more than any other one is the whole system of writing. In the English language, we obviously write from left to right, and if you're a left-handed person, you just get straight-up shit on in this category. I haven't used a pencil (except on Scantron tests) since 9th grade, because everytime I do I end up with a gigantic graphite stain all over the outside of my hand from it rubbing over my own previously-written words. The words on the paper would also usually be smeared beyond recognition, as well, leaving my already extremely messy penmanship altogether unreadable. (I also blame my terribly messy writing on my left-handedness. Watch a lefty write sometime, and you'll see that it doesn't seem like a very natural action at all. Most of us bend our wrist in a very uncomfortable way in an attempt to crane our hand above the smearing area, which just results in smearing the words of the lines higher up. The whole process of writing is is totally unnatural for a left-handed person, and since all I ever do is write, I'm constantly reminded of it. I would've graduated from elementary school with a perfect A grade point average, but I always got C's on handwriting. Why the fuck do kids get graded on handwriting? That's like grading someone on how high you can jump or whether or not you have a nice singing voice. You either have it or you don't. You can't exactly study to become a great handwriter, and if you did, people would just beat the fuck out of you and steal your lunch money anyway.) Sometimes, this even happens with pens. A couple of months ago, I bought a friend of mine a pretty ridiculous birthday card at our student bookstore, and when I went to write a message for her on it, I smeared the black ink from my gel pen all over the glossy surface of the card. So, I had to go back in and buy the exact same card all over again, and I'm pretty sure the asian chick working at the counter thought that I was fucking insane, because it's rare for a kid to buy a card with a bunch of bikini-clad senior citizens on it. It's just plain weird for him to buy it twice within 10 minutes of each other.

In retrospect, I should've just went with whiteout.

It's obvious that when the written form of the English language was invented, it was invented by a right-handed person who paid no heed to the 10 percent of people in the world who are left-handed. He fucked over a lot of people, but he's probably hailed in history as some sort of genius. But then again, I'm trying to think of a way that I could solve this problem, and can't think of anything. I guess it's better to screw 10 percent of the people instead of 90 percent.

To further the whole writing problem, it's very difficult to find a desk that is made for lefties in college classrooms. It seems like they're all for right-handed people, and I can't ever get one that works for me unless I show up to class 20 minutes early, and that is definitely not an option.

Another discrimination against left-handed people comes from scissors. They can only be conveniently used by right-handed folk, and this has been pissing me off since day one. Or, more accurately, the first grade. We were making cookbooks shaped like the face of Santa for our mothers, and we had to cut his face out of every single normal sheet of paper. As the only lefty in my class at the time, I was the only one whose paper book came out with a bearded man that looked more like a homeless man than Santa, who has always been very well-trimmed for a dude who spends most of his life away from society at the north pole. My mom pretended that she liked the gift anyway, even though she doesn't cook and had to have realized that it looked terrible. I guess she just felt bad for giving birth to one of those dreaded southpaws. (I should note that I'm the only lefty in my family, and that it's the first exhibit I always point out when making my case for being adopted. I'm very different from everyone in my family, and I constantly talk to my mom about how I may be the mailman's child, because I'm left-handed. And cool.)

When I was little, I wanted to be a writer and an illustrator, until I figured out that I couldn't even adequately operate a pair of scissors, let alone oil pastels. Those motherfuckers smear like nothing else, let me tell you.

I know you're probably saying that left-handed scissors are, in fact, manufactured. But I don't own any, because I'd have to go into Michael's or some other crafts store to get them, and those places smell awful, like a mix of potpurri, death, and vomit.

***SIDENOTE: I just walked into my kitchen to get a drink, and on the way I passed my dad, who is sitting on the couch in the living room. He's watching a Tyler Perry movie on TBS. I just want to say that this proves he is not cool enough to be left-handed, and would also like to include this as further evidence that I am, in fact, adopted.

A lot of my friends are into golf, but I haven't ever gotten that excited about it. I mean, it's a cool sport that doesn't require a great deal of physical exertion, and you can do it fairly well while drunk, but it's a lot more difficult to find lefty clubs. I mean, I can find them if I look hard enough, but I don't as a matter of principle. I get pissed that they're difficult to find, and as a result, the world of golf will be forced to live without the likes of me.

I also really have a hard time getting excited about it, because there aren't many lefties to idolize on the pro circuit. In every other sport, there's at least a few left-handed athletes to pick from, and I tend to like them because I can empathize with them. In golf, the only famous left-handed pro is Phil Mickelson, and he's not the most likeable golfer ever. He has bigger man-breasts than I do!

Some people (right-handed) try to make lefties feel better about all of this by saying that they actually have an advantage in baseball, but I'm not buying that shit. Sure, left-handed pitchers are in demand, but I was never a pitcher. I wanted to be a shortstop, and they wouldn't let me because I was left-handed. If you're left-handed and want to play in the infield, you get to play only first base, which is a cool position, but there's really no variety. It's frustrating. I spent most of my baseball career standing in the outfield, and that wasn't very appealing because I quit before the age when kids could actually consistently smack it that far. As a result of this, I picked a lot of dandelions and did a lot of thinking about the meaning of life while my team was on defense as a child, and I don't think it had very positive effects on me.

All of these things seem pretty trivial, though, compared to this next statistic: apparently, left-handed people die an average of 10 years earlier than your normal right-handed person. This is something my friend Evan told me, and never hesitates to bring up. That asshole will probably outlive us all.

This is a scary statistic, and I have no idea why it is at all, so I'm going to choose not to believe it. Sadly, with the way things are these days, it's increasingly more difficult to simply die of old age or natural causes. I'll put a positive spin on it, though, and say that lefties just up and die because they experience a lot more and have just a hell of a lot more fun than your average righty. We're kind of like blondes, or something.

All of these things have put a pretty negative spin on being left-handed, and I guess a lot of people that are part of this hallowed group wish that they weren't. In my research, I actually came across a website that had advice for the parents of a lefty. Apparently, some people treat it as though it were a disease, and I don't think it is at all. I'm glad I'm a lefty, and now I'm going to tell you a few reasons why.

Firstly, since there only 10 percent of the world's population is left-handed, it helps to make me an individual. I'm basically an average, white, middle-class male, and it's kind of cool to actually be part of a minority and be able to break away from the status quo. I realize that being left-handed doesn't make me a different person, per se, but it's still domething different, and I enjoy that.

Being left-handed helped me with basketball. For some reason, southpaws seem to have a natural knack for shooting from distance, and since I am--as previously mentioned--an average white male who happens to be really slow, this helped me get decent at my favorite sport.

Lefties are traditionally more creative than righties, and that's something I'm proud of. I consider myself to be a creative dude (though this may not be true), and we're also among good creative company. There are many famous actors and writers who are left-handed, because lefties traditionally think with the right side of their brain, which is the creative side. I can't solve math problems without using my fingers and toes, but fuck it. I can write a sonnet if I have to.

Polar bears are left-handed.

And my favorite reason for being left-handed actually coincides with a discrimination against lefties. Computer mouses (mice?) are made for right-handed people. You can purchase left-handed ones, but if you're anywhere using a computer that isn't yours (a friends, a lab, etc.), you have to use your right hand to operate the mouse. This was how I was conditioned to operate a computer, and now I'm thankful that I was.

You know why? Because I can operate a computer mouse while simultaneously writing, eating with a fork, or--most importantly--catching a beat.


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