Lefty, married a lefty. Two kids, one righty, one lefty. The righty has us baffled, but we love her anyway.
I do the hooked hand–pretty sure it came from teachers trying to make my writing slant the right way. Honestly the way they taught handwriting to lefties was a crime. Mirror everything righties do, but still write from left to write. I have nightmares over handwriting in fifth grade. My teacher told us it was the most important subject and spent an hour on it first thing every morning. And despised me for doing it wrong.
My parents were great. When I was four, my father sent away for lefty scissors which were rare at the time. But they got lost when I was transferred to a different school for second grade, and I taught myself to cut righty, the only right-handed thing I do.
My grandfather bought me left handed scissors when I was a kid. Don’t remember if they helped much but he tried. He was a tailor (as was his father in England). He was very particular about scissors, and zippers, and tailoring/sewing in general!
For me, a C in handwriting was a rare celebration. Usually D or D-minus. (I don’t think I ever got an F because honestly I did TRY to do the assignments) Thanks goodness I got to use keyboard so much in adult life.
@sevmom my parents and my brother are all left handed. A few years after I came along, my parents adopted my younger sister, who is right handed, so I wasn’t the oddball
Genes are interesting. Dh and I are both right handed, as were his parents, but two of our four kids are lefties. They are also the only ones in our family with blue eyes, blond (now darker) and fair skin. They apparently got all the recessive genes. Funny thing is they are my younger two. My older two are very Italian looking. So when this blue eyed blond baby was born, he looked like he belonged in another family. Then his baby sister came along with the same coloring. Imagine my surprise when they then both turned out to be left handed! We joke all the time that they were both switched at birth.
My daughter never had any issues with writing, but to this day my son struggles. Thankfully his high school used ipads which made notetaking, etc easier for him.
I don’t think there is any other way to play than righty. How would a lefty violin work? Buy a special custom violin? Same for the ukulele. We have both and when I fiddle it’s as a righty.
I’m a lefty but don’t angle my paper or crook my hand. Typing was a great thing I learned in middle achoo and erasable typing paper and correction tape was even better.
I still remember my teacher making me recopy a paper I tried to turn in because it was so messy (she made us write in ink and with my left hand I smudged ax I wrote. She couldn’t believe I had recopied it multiple times and it was my best effort. She agonized watching me redo it and having the final new product much messier than the paper I had tried to turn in.
In law school, I took verbatim makes every day in class. HBoy did my hand ache. At least it had figured out how to write a bit neater but prefer typing on my computer since being done wit school.
Figuring out how to do things was always a challenge—it’s not really that you do things the same but with the other hand dominating. My boss gave me a set of right handed golf clubs for settling a huge case. That caused me to learn golf as a right ander. I was middling and never devoted the time to get very good.
I was forced to write with my right hand by the nuns. I throw and eat with my left hand. BUT–I bat right-handed and kick a football with my right foot.
I share all this because I also stutter. I read an article a while ago that correlated stuttering with being forced to use the “unnatural” hand for writing. It had to do with causing bad connections between the right and left halves of the brain, which contributed to stuttering.
Both parents were RHers. Yet, myself, S, and two of three siblings are all lefties. I also had a teacher try to make me write with my right hand. The only thing that I do purely right handed is cutting. I’m probably more ambilevous than ambidextrous.
My younger brother was switched by my grandmother from left hand to right. His handwriting is very messy. My grandma tried to switch me but I was too stubborn.
I noticed in law school, there were more lefties than I was used to. Maybe because we are stubborn and stick to our guns? We definitely didn’t have nearly enough left handed desks in lecture halls but I learned to make do with whether I had, which was usually a right handed tiny fold out table.
I think by necessity lefties are more flexible. My mostly lefty BIL is somewhat ambidextrous and operates with whichever hand is most convenient, which freaked out others in med school.
