Left-handed Powah

Due to the fact that my blog is called "Southpawian Fury," I think it would make me a bad left-hander if I didn't mention that yesterday was International Left-Hander's day. I didn't really celebrate it other than chuckle with my cousin and another co-worker about it, as she remarked that the three of us (all lefties) being in her office caused a stream of power to burst forth and spread throughout our building.

I've always been proud of being left-handed. It's kind of a weird thing, I guess. I think that it started because of my grandfather, who was always fascinated with the fact that I was the sole lefty in our family (at least on my dad's side). I remember he would often give me left-handed knickknacks or trinkets. One day he gave me a pair of left-handed scissors... And I felt so bad about it because I actually use scissors with my right hand-- it's one of the only things I do right-handed. So I pretended that it was normal for me to cut left-handed and demonstrated it in front of him.

Sometimes it was tough getting used to a right-handed world, particularly at school. Course, I never knew it at the time. Like, using those annoying three-ring binders to write out papers or homework-- the metal clips would always get in the way of writing unless I turned the page and wrote on the back of it and the binders were on my right. Or sitting at desks (where the tabletop portion is attached to the chair)-- there might have been one or two desks for lefties somewhere, but I certainly never found one. But, like all lefties, I just always adapted.

Hard to believe that in the past it was considered a defect of some kind to be left-handed, and parents would often force their children to switch handedness (which can seriously affect a child's development and actually lead to stuttering and other issues). I always find little tidbits like that to be really interesting.

Anyway, I guess I'm proud to be a lefty because there aren't all that many of us out there compared with right-handed folks. So it's kind of neat that a day has been set aside for us "sinister" people.