Are you cack-handed?
Do you struggle with sinistrality or sinistromanuality?
Are you scratching your head trying to figure out what the heck I am talking about? What I want to know is if you are left handed. In case you didn’t know, historically speaking, left handed folks throughout the world have been thought of as…well…clumsy, evil or immoral! Just downright bad.
The world has a right-handed bias and no one knows this better than those people who are lefty by birth. If you are ambidextrous, like me, the word used to describe my condition is broken down to mean skillful on both sides or “right on both sides”. This is because dexter translates as right in Latin. If there is a right on both sides then it would stand to reason there is a word that is the opposite, right? I mean correct? There is indeed such a word and it is ambisinistrous, meaning clumsy or left on both sides. Are you starting to feel a little bad for all of those lefties out there yet?
My husband is a lefty and has some pretty big issues with things like scissors. Seriously! If you are right handed, go find yourself a pair of scissors and try to cut a piece of paper with them in your left hand. I will wait. Did you cut the paper? OK, but was it a beautiful straight and clean cut? I didn’t think so!
See what I am talking about?! OK, so my husband requires specialized equipment to participate in daily life. Items that most people take for granted can make life hard for a lefty. Things like: scissors, manual can openers, knives (think about how the blade may be shaped to cut well), spiral notebooks (where is the spiral when a lefty is writing), garden shears, and tape measures (really! Look at the numbers). All of these items and more are what lefties have to cope with or work around every day. My husband’s livelihood depends on the availability of customized guitars. If he forgets his guitar or something happens to it on a gig, he has a very slim, if not non-existent, chance of running across another guitar player who happens to have a lefty guitar available.
Some interesting ideas about being a lefty:
1. Stone age tools have been found to be split about evenly between lefty and righty and some have said that because the heart is on the left side of the body, those with the ability to wield a sword well with their right hand would better be able to stay alive. Natural selection?
2. In the northern hemisphere a person would face south to follow the sun which moves from left to right from East to West. This made righty an important thing to possess and gave it a ton of significance.
3. Christianity is very righty oriented. Psalm 118:16 "The right hand of the lord is exalted: the right hand of the lord does valiantly." The sheep and goat parable offers that those on the right will inherit the kingdom of God and those on the left will only have everlasting fire available to them. Bummer.
Why am I writing about being left handed when I am not?
I am building awareness among righties that we need to understand the plight of the lefties and not ask them to cut paper if they don’t have the right scissors!
Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy this post? Let me know and leave a comment. Share the post with your family and friends on your favorite social media or subscribe and help support Flying Monkeys. If you go to StumbleUpon using the icon on the right and click the “I Like it” button(it’s free), you help other people to discover Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys and that will help our little blog grow and our monkeys can keep doing what they do best - FLY. Thank you for all of your support. The Monkey Queen
No comments:
Post a Comment