August 14, 2015

I didn’t know it was International #Lefthandersday yesterday until an article on Mashableshowed up on Facebook. Cool, good read. Then I checked out the hashtag on Twitter and my entire life as a lefty was laid out before me. Everything I went through, endured, suffered, clumsily managed (scissors, tin openers, etc…) and of course, the smudged hand. Look how many retweets that had? If I have ever attended a celebration in your life and managed to get organized enough to write a card and you still have that card, go and check it out. I bet it’s completely smudged with my hand dragging through the pen, and I know I would have turned up at your place with said smudge. That has been my life. I hate cards. Not a good thing with English in-laws let me tell you. I always liked being a lefty. It always felt good being just a little bit different from the norm. There’s a lot of good things said about lefties – more creative, artistic, right brained, etc…. but when you look back in history and understand the bollocks our lefty ancestors suffered, or the idea it’s a sign of the devil, or being smacked on the hand with a ruler to stop you writing with your left hand, etc… well I am definitely pleased I was born in this time. With that said, in school, right handed people were not very good at teaching lefties things like knitting on crochet. Yes crochet. I was a crochet’er. When we had crochet lessons at school, 10 of the parent volunteers tried to teach me – all failed – and then one great lady worked out how to crochet in reverse so it made sense to me. Years of happy crocheting followed that moment. Been a long time since I picked up a hook though. I wasn’t, however, pleased to see a Bush in the collection of lefties. Clinton and Obama good, Angelina Jolie, Oprah and many others good, but not a Bush…. Oh please no! Finally, this is the one image of yesterday’s #Lefthandersday Twitter storm that totally captured my heart. If you are right handed, you will never ever understand the dread a lefty feels walking into a lecture theatre, and this is the desk/writing surface you are faced with. Can you imagine how much you have to wrap yourself around your body to be able to write on the wrong side? Not fun that. So to all my fellow leftys, it’s cool being 10 per cent of the population right? Although I always felt just a little bit bummed that neither of my boys turned out to be leftys… Yours, without the bollocks Andrea