Wife Like Me

I’m left-handed. It gives me distinction among my friends, and perhaps allowed me to be “different” enough naturally that I never completely gave in to the teenage urge to artificially differentiate myself through blue hair or all-black clothes. People always notice when I pick up a pen, and sometimes even remember me because I’m “the one who’s left-handed.”

Tonight I looked up “left handed” on Google and discovered some Simpson-esque Leftoriums wherein all they sell is merchandise for southpaws. Having been a lefty all my life, there were some things that I never noticed were abnormal. For example, while looking at these shops, I discovered that mugs (for tea or cocoa or coffee or whatever you drink) is supposed to face you, not your audience. Wow! I now feel that I can blame my inability to throw a boomerang on my left-handedness since I discovered that they are handed. Colin, however, pointed out to me that we don’t know anyone who can throw a boomerang. I still like to think that I would be a prodigy at boomeranging if I only had a left-handed one.

I’d heard of notebooks with the spiral binding on the other side, but I’d never seen one until today or I would have bought it immediately during my school days. Right-handed people will never understand the torture of spiral notebooks, since their hands never get torn up while they write. Speaking of writing, I’m not one of those lefties who writes with her hand all curled up over her writing–I just write from the wrong side, not from the top, and I never understood why anyone would. While looking at left-handed sites tonight, I read that some people write that way so that they can see what they wrote! I never even considered looking at what I already wrote, which may explain a lot…

Of course, there were silly things in these stores. There was a left-handed clock, where the 1 is to the left of the 12 and the hands go backwards. That seems pretty much useless and gimmicky to me. And there were mouse pads and mugs that talked about how great it is to be left-handed, and that’s probably just not worth spending money on. It was an enlightening, but probably unnecessary, product to find that there is such a thing as a left-handed ruler and tape measure. I always just thought I was doing something wrong when I was measuring, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until now. I was just measuring backwards!

I’d like to blame all of my weirdnesses on my natural left-handedness. Maybe I’ll do that with a big chunk of them now. It had honestly never occurred to me before that some things are harder for me because of my handedness (except, of course, peeling apples and potatoes–I cut with right-handed scissors, so that’s no problem). Any time I have difficulty doing something for the first time, I’ll just say to myself: “Don’t worry. It’s just a little harder for you because you’re left-handed.” Then I’ll have another chance to enjoy emphasizing my distinctive sinister characteristic.