Left Handers, any difficulties?

If anyone is passing through Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, go and visit Mary Queen of Scots’ House there.

The spiral staircase goes ‘the other way’ because of the left-handedness in the family.

There are plenty of left handed guitarists who play right handed guitars, including my own son, who is pretty handy on the guitar. When learning guitar at first, everything feels totally foreign, so it doesn’t matter a tot which hand is doing what. There is a lot to be said for the dominant hand (left in your kids case) doing the fretting work.

So I wouldn’t worry about guitar – can’t speak for golf though.

Smudgy writing and having to fire an SA81 rifle right handed. Can’t really think of anything else.

Left handed corkscrew, seriously?

Some great responses there chaps/ladies

I like your thoughts on NOT using left handed equipment. I don’t want to necessary make life easier from him, just want him to be able to get on in life. So I will not let the wife buy left handed scissors and in the important art of cake eating ( 😀 ), left handed forks will not be a problem, he takes after his mother’s side of the family and will probably use a shovel.

Interest to see so many ambidextrous or semi ambidextrous and the different combinations that throws up.

I’ll keep a close eye on the dyslexia… (although never formally diagnosed, I’m sure I suffer from it to a degree … it’s a PITA)

And on the plus side, he will be more intelligent and attractive to the opposite sex.

The spiral staircase goes ‘the other way’ because of the left-handedness in the family.

Good point. If he’s ever in a sword-fight in a church tower, tell him to run.

Never knew that fact about knives, thanks for that, years of wonky bread slices could be at an end.

I knew about the serrated knife thing but can someone explain left handed rulers?

Numbers on the ‘other’ side, going from the ‘other’ end.

Good point. If he’s ever in a sword-fight in a church tower, tell him to run.

Unless he’s the one doing the attacking, ofc.

Unless he’s the one doing the attacking, ofc.

Oh yeah 😳

Interesting to see I’m not the only freak who writes left handed, but uses scissors righty, plays racquet sports righty, right footed etc.
My son is completely left handed and really suffers with smudging his writing.
I remember drawing a very artistic picture with charcoal at school, really detailed… By the time I’d got to the right side of the paper I had completely wiped the whole thing… Taught me to draw right to left that did!

Arm wrestling.

I write left handed, but do most other things right handed. I’m quite a good juggler, but I can only do juggling 3 balls in one hand (quite a hard thing to do) in my right hand, and am very right dominant doing tricks. I play tennis right handed.

I am convinced that the writing is entirely because I was an arsey bugger at school and was messing with their minds. I used to use left handed scissors in those days too, although that might have been more to do with the joy of watching other people struggle to use them.

Oh, I use fork in left hand for most eating even if there isn’t any knife though (things like curries etc. where you don’t need a knife), but then a lot of righties do that too.

Numbers on the ‘other’ side, going from the ‘other’ end.

numbers starting at the other end, I see what you mean but can’t really see what advantage there is there.

“numbers on the other side”….eh?

I’m probably being a bit thick.

I did always find fanning playing cards awkward – unless they have the symbol on all 4 corners they tend to be for right handed fanners. Not a huge problem in life though 🙂

I think he means numbers starting from the other end, yes? So with zero on the right hand end, being the opposite way round to text. So you don’t thave to look or draw under your forearm?

The ruler thing is really minor and makes virtually no difference. And, like scissors, it’s a bit annoying once you’re used to standard ones.

I think the basic idea is that, when measuring a line on a piece of paper, you’d ‘naturally’ line the ruler up underneath the line and the numbers would start on the top edge of the ruler, by your thumb – as this is the easiest way to manipulate the ruler.

EDIT: The main advantage is that when you come to draw a line, it’s more natural for a left-hander to pull the pen from left to right, easier to draw an accurately-measured line and your hand doesn’t obscure the markings.

Thus a left-handed one is marked up in reverse.

It does actually feel a little more natural but, as I said, it’s really minor and pretty pointless!

So you don’t thave to look or draw under your forearm?

got a presumably RH ruler here, hold with my left draw a 12cm line, OK, now hold with my right draw a 12cm line. Admittedly if you want to drag the pencil instead of pushing it you need to start at 12 and go down to 0, doesn’t seem much of a disadvantage. Sorry still not seeing it.

<edit>

It does actually feel a little more natural but, as I said, it’s really minor and pretty pointless!

ok fair enough, thanks for explaining.

Always struck me as an excuse to sell tat. File next to “left-handed clocks”.

i’m a lefty and the only thing i do righty is play golf (although i’m total mince). For me, the hardest thing about being a lefty, was having to ‘reverse’ everything when being taught how to do something. Also, when i served a craft apprenticeship, a lot of the machines and power tools were set up for righties.

On the positive side being a natural lefty has always been an advantage at sports such as squash, football and taekwondo as rightys have little practice at defending against a natural lefty.

Oh, and another difficulty for he’ll face will be that he’ll always steal somebody else’s bread roll at weddings.

There are plenty of left handed guitarists who play right handed guitars, including my own son, who is pretty handy on the guitar. When learning guitar at first, everything feels totally foreign, so it doesn’t matter a tot which hand is doing what. There is a lot to be said for the dominant hand (left in your kids case) doing the fretting work.

The only reason you’d not buy a left handed guitar is if you were too tight for the initial outlay. Sorry, but its better for the dominant hand to be doing one thing or the other. So either the fundamental design of the guitar is wrong, or you are.

Always struck me as an excuse to sell tat.

NOTE – picture shows a blue left-handed pencil and pink right-handed pencil plus the sharpener that goes with each.

http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/acatalog/smove_easyergo_pencil.html

😉

because I am left-handed.. I am having real difficulty going to work right now. It’s over there .. (points r..r..rrr…rrrriiight)

AHH PIZZA

Gawd bless my mum for letting me grown up as a leftie, rather than succumb to the pressure of my grannie and the school who were trying to force me down the dark right side (showing my age there…).

Oh, and make sure he learns to use a mouse with his right hand, much better – leaves the left free to write notes / type.

That really spooks my missus!

Apart from that, the only other rightie thing I do is play golf – golfing left-handed just seems weird and always has done.

Hit drivers/irons right handed, but putt left handed. The look of confusion on some guys I play with is interesting!

Being left handed is ace at school playing rounders, you can amble round at your own pace when the other team are all running from one side of the field to the other.

I always enjoyed setting up right handed then just before the ball was thrown swap back to left handed – very rarely many fielders on that side of the field by then.

I don’t know if it’s left handedness but I can write mirrored writing almost as fast as I can do normal words!

The hardest thing for me being left handed was to learn to use a chainsaw right handed!

That came pretty natural for me.
Yes, easy for me – I just pointed to the tree I wanted chopping with my left hand and got the gardener to do it 😛

fork and spoon is odd. knife and fork = fork in the left. spoon = spoon in the left. fork and spoon…spoon in the left aand wave the fork about uselessly…well that’s me at least.

You and me both fella. Can never do posh desserts where you need both fork and spoon.

thing I find the worst is posidrive screws that need to be done TIGHT.

Get it in with left, then often swap to right to nip it up.

Maybe there is a correlation between STW and lefthandedness?

When the going gets tough with screws I put my palm over the end of the screwdriver and push really hard, then I do motorbike throttle type actions with my fist on the handle. Works with either hand.

Mum is left handed and she’s a hairdresser, left handed scissors are a god send!! Apparently

There’s a lot of leftie’s on here!

I always enjoyed setting up right handed then just before the ball was thrown swap back to left handed – very rarely many fielders on that side of the field by then.

+1

I never really got into left handed scissors, yes RH ones are a slight inconvenience, but no more!

I turn the page virtually to 90 degrees and write down the page, don’t smudge it then.

I do remember being told off at school for doing ticks backwards (this was early 90s, so not exactly the hey day of the cane!), so I do my ticks in a slightly cack-handed fasion. Not the end of the world.

Not much else.

At uni our lecture theatres had built in desks on the right arm, which was annoying, I used to have to lean on my knee instead.

I get to wail “I’m disabled by society” at miss njee20 quite often, which amuses me.

I complain that cake forks are always right handed, both my mother and MIL are looking for left handed cake forks to shut me up.

I personally use a computer mouse right handed, and cutlery right handed (although if I only have one implement I have it in my left), but have my glass on the LH side, I do occasionally drink my neighbours drink if there’s lots of glasses set out.

It’s not a vast hinderance.

So all you lefties, to which ear do you put the phone? I find it really weird on my left ear for some reason – everything sounds different and I find it harder to concentrate on the conversation.

Right ear – left hand free to write with then. Like you my left ear dosn’t seem to do phone calls too well.

Oh, left ear for me …

Ok how ‘different’ are you?

I’m lefthanded
I’m AB- blood type
and
I my ‘heart’ line on each hand is unbroken and totally straight

How different am I? Good question 🙂

So all you lefties, to which ear do you put the phone?

Left, right feels odd.

I do remember being told off at school for doing ticks backwards

I started doing this somewhere around high school. Partly because it feels more natural, and partly to mess with people’s heads.

It’s also why my smilies are reversed; they’re left-handed (-:

which ear do you put the phone?

Left, always. Maybe I’m left eared too? Never really gave that much consideration.

I’m a lefty musician – wind instruments wouldn’t matter if they were left or right handed, because the entire key system is pretty alien to a starter, trying to make a lefthanded sax would be an engineering cost non-starter

guitars are simpler to build lefty but as a lefty guitarist I would urge people to persevere with right handed guitars – I wish I had

drums you just set em up as you want but it’s easy to switch left to right

computer mice I am ambidextrous, scissors are no bother

as a lefty you are forced into being more ambidextrous because you are in a minority which has benefits in the long run, e.g. driving on the continent is a piece of cake

As others have said, your child may be left or right handed for different tasks.

I am right footed, right handed with a tennis racket and scissors and a sewing needle.

Left handed with a pen, painting (small scale), with a spoon (all other cutlery normal). I used to be left handed with a mouse but got so fed up of rearranging work stations for PCs that I changed over to my right. Using a hammer or painting something big like a garage door is done with whatever hand can reach best at that moment.

Mostly I do large movements with my right side and small detailed movements with my left.

The first time I ever did soldering I was better at it than the person teaching me, mostly because of the hand thing as it played into it.

I was lucky, no one ever made any issue about it – which is best as making a big deal out of it is silly, no one makes a fuss about being right handed. There are also loads of left handed people about now as schools and idiot people no longer force a ‘handedness’ on kids. Just let your kid do as he will and dont make a fuss or issue of it, its just natural behaviour and no different to being right handed.

Oh and its total rubbish that left handed people cant write properly or smudge everything. It depends how you hold the pen – if you hold it the same as right handed people but reversed there is no need at all for smudging or awkwardness (we used to write with fountain pens at school for a few terms and I had no issues). I have even had people talking to me when I have been holding a pen saying how weird and messy left handers are, to suddenly stop and look thrown as the did not even notice I was writing with my left hand while they were talking, cos I dont really do anything different to anyone else and they had been expecting some kind of clumsy awkward mess making. More fool them.

Something I found helpful which I chose to do myself when in my teens was to learn to do things with either hand, just for fun. My own choice and its turned out to have benefits. Lots of tasks, like the soldering, benefit from this and I would suggest right handed people should try to be more left handed as being able to use either hand for tasks can be so useful.

Ear to phone – either, whichever is nearer the phone set.

Also left handed with graphics tablet but now right handed with mouse – so useful.

I also struggle with table football. Just cant get the power in the attackers with my right hand- always get gubbed.