The Daily Buzz13 reasons to celebrate International Left-Handedness Day
Being left handed means feeling like you’re doing everything backwards. Measuring tapes, scissors, pens attached to desks at the bank, cameras, some power tools, can openers and school desks all prove to be far more challenging for those of us who lead with our left. As a lefty, I always aimed to get to classes early enough to score a left-handed desk to avoid Twister-like contortions of using the others.
The desk was only the start of school woes: don’t forget about impossible-to-use binders, coiled notebooks that leave indentations as you write, and a hand smeared with ink at the end of the day.
If you’re a lefty, August 13 is your special day to bond with your fellow southpaws. Mark it by joining the club, and checking out these 13 facts in honour of our celebration.
1. Being left handed means you’re the odd one out. Only about 10 per cent of people are naturally left handed, although older generations may show a lower proportion of lefties because many children were forced to write with their right hands in school.
2. Southpaw and lefty are the more common nicknames for left-handed people. Here are a few more, courtesy of Anything Left-Handed:Buck-fisted, Gar-pawed, Left-kelly, Cack-handed, Gibble-fisted, Left-plug, Caggy, Golly-handed, Scoochy, Clicky, Kay-neived, Scrammy-handed, Corrie-fisted, Keck-fisted, Skiffle-handed, Cow-pawed, Keggy-handed, Cuddy-wifter, Kerry, Spuddy-handed, Dolly-pawed, Kittaghy, Squiffy, peg-handed.
3. The names for left-handed people in other languages are often none too flattering, either… some of which have ended up adopted into normal English usage: “Gauche” meaning awkward or clumsy (French); “sinister” (Latin); “zuo” means hindering or bad (Chinese); “levsha” is untrustworthy (Russian); “linkshandig” meaning inside-out (one Dutch dialect); “links” or “linkisch” meaning awkward (German); “bal” meaning bad (Hungarian); “mancini” or “mancina” means crooked or maimed (Italian); “chueco” is twisted (Mexican Spanish); “canhoto” meaning lacking ability or coordination (Portuguese); “kushoto” means weak (Swahili).
4. Lefties are more creative. Right-handed people tend to have brains that strictly divvy up tasks, reports the American Psychological Association (APA). The brains of most left-handed people are more symmetrical, which paves the way to creative thinking.
5. Having a more symmetrical brain, as about 80 per cent of left-handed people do, can also lead to problems. An APA report says that less-lateralized brains may be linked to lower IQ scores, schizophrenia and “magic ideation,” the belief that events that do not have a causal relation with each other still may be related.
6. Five (well, four and a half) out of seven recent U.S. presidents are left-handed: Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all been southpaws, while Ronald Reagan was reported to be ambidextrous, although it is likely he was born left handed and forced to switch in childhood.
7. Four of the five original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed. (Maybe that’s why you don’t get an irritating right-handed ergonomic mouse when you buy an iMac?)
8. There are many, many famous left-handed people: Paul McCartney, Prince William, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert De Niro, Matt Groening, Babe Ruth, Larry Bird, Tom Cruise, Tina Fey, Marie Curie, Fred Astaire, Bob Dylan, Sting, John McEnroe, Wolfgang Mozart, Bill Gates, Mark Twain, Oprah Winfrey, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Eminem, Martina Navratilova, and Lady Gaga are all lefties, just to name a few.
9. On a QWERTY keyboard there are 1447 English words typed solely with the left hand. Only 187 are typed with the right hand alone. The most commonly-used letters, A, E, R, S and T, are on the left.
10. Left-handed people have an advantage in one-on-one sports such as tennis, fencing and boxing. In a match between opposite handed athletes, the lefty is competing against a right-hander, as usual. Their opponent, faced with an unusual left-handed opponent, has a disadvantage.
11. Want a trendy watch, but don’t want the usual problem of having the buttons on the wrong side? The Apple Watch can be set up for use on the right wrist with an internal left-hand mode.
12. What are the chances of being left-handed? If both parents are left handed, their child will have a 26 per cent chance of being left-handed. Males are three times more likely than females to be left handed, and in sets of twins, there is a 20 per cent chance one of them will be a lefty.
13. You might be familiar with Ned Flanders’ Leftorium on "The Simpsons," but did you know there is a store (and website) devoted to left-handers in real life, too? From pens for lefties to stationery and scissors, you can find them at Anything Left-Handed.
