Sort of OT: Right v left brain

I'm right handed and my designs tend to be small and simple. I do love to play with color and textures - especially with beads.

Cheryl

It's interesting to me how the acceptance of being left-handed has changed over the years.

My mom was a twin -- her brother was naturally left-handed, but was very firmly taught to be right-handed, up to and including tying his left hand behind his back when he started school and was learning to write.

As a result, he writes right-handed, but does virtually everything else left-handed.

The designs I've done are also quite simple, and I'm right handed. I have done original paintings as well. I know there's some theory that says being left-handed means one is more creative, but I haven't found that to be the case.

-- Jere

I have always wondered why I am so definitely right-handed, but ever since I can remember i have always dealt cards left-handed. It makes one think. I tend to be precise and scientific ( the facts ma'am), therefore not artistic. I use charts, not create them.

Gillian

I am a lefty, with 2 out of 3 siblings who are left-handed, as well as a mother who was. By necessity, I had to learn the computer keypad and mouse with my right-hand, so my designing is using both right and left now.

Jaenne

I'm left handed and design my own pieces. My neice and nephew are both left handed, and both can draw a picture with a pen or pencil that looks like it's about to get up off the paper and walk towards you.

Maureen

I'm right handed. I also paint and draw sometimes, and love photography and my Paint Shop Pro. My brother and my son are both left handed. My son does seem to be artistic. He loves to draw.

My brother told me once that a lot of left handed people write left handed but use their right hand for everything else, thus they are not "true" lefties. Beats me...I write with my right hand but use my left hand for just about everything else. I guess I'm weird, huh? LOL!!!

Karen R. >

Lefties are existing in a predominately right-handed world. We are, by necessity, forced to adapt. Thus there are many people that are entirely right-handed in everything they do, but very few lefties that haven't succumbed to a right-dominate environment. It really breaks down to how you are using your hands. For example, a right-handed person will (normally) hold a piece of paper stationary in their left hand and move the scissors in his right hand in the direction they are cutting. A leftie will hold the scissors stationary in the right hand and move the paper into the direction they want to cut. I heard it referred to as your "smart" hand and your "worker" hand. The right hand does the meanial tasks, while the left handles the creative/imaginative side.

Sorry, I rambled. I am facinated with how alien left-handers are in the world they were born into.

Jaenne

And then there's me, a right-handed person born into a family of left-handed women. All the scissors and kitchen implements were special lefty stuff that I had to use upside down and backward until I got my own.

At some point, it was determined that I am right-handed, but left-eyed. Therefore, any sport that requires hitting a ball with an implement, I have to hold the implement with my left hand, or I can't see what I'm swinging at.

I'm glad to know there's at least one other person that's right-handed, left-eyed. I tried to buy binoculars at a sporting goods store one day, and was told that they are all made to set up with the right eye as main focus-er, and then adjusting the left eye. Since I could never see clearly more than an inch from my nose with the right eye(no glasses could ever help), and now have a "black dot' in the center of that eye, there was absolutely no way *that* method would work. But it was astonishing to hear the young clerk saying that everyone's right eye was their dominant eye, when for almost 50 years, my left eye has been my dominant eye. Reminds me not to make such sweeping generalizations(never say never; always is a long time, etc...)

-- Carey in MA

Count me in the right-handed, left-eyed group. Makes for really sore boobies if you're inclined toward archery.

I'm left handed for writing, sewing & eating (OK, I've been known to shovel it in with *both* hands :D), but use my right hand for cutting (knives & scissors), which confused my 2nd grade teacher as she had supplied 'lefty' scissors but I couldn't use them! Also use trackball/mouse with my right hand - just the way I learned - but can't do squat with a mouse/trackball with my left hand... like if I try to write with my right hand... it all comes out bassackwards ;)

BUT - I do remember reading somewhere that there is no "true" left-handedness. They consider writing to be such an intricate/complicated process, evein if all you do with your left hand is write - you *are* left handed.

I'm a lefty, only one in my immediate family, but I have a cousin who grew up in Germany and was 'forced' to switch as a child, but has now reverted back (and is much happier), and *both* his daughters are left-handed.

And some of us use scissors and paper BOTH ways!

I am unable to use the scissors any way other than I descibed. You are lucky. And here I am considering relearning the guitar as a lefty! I am just begging for trouble! LOL!

Jaenne

Or a sore right cheek bone, if you try to aim while firing a shotgun! (Didn't have a problem with archery a camp, though.)

-- Carey in MA

I'm right-handed and left-eyed. My grandma who raised me was left-handed but had been forced in school to use her right hand. She used to do a lot of hand sewing and did it with her right hand but from a left-handed perspective, and when she taught me, that was how I learned. To this day I do my needlework "upsidedown and backwards"...I tend to start at the lower left corner of a piece and make my cross-stitches the opposite of everybody else.

Mostly, I muddle through ok...where I will still yet and again get confused is with ironing. Which way the ironing board faces, which way the iron faces, heck, even which way the clothes are oriented, are sources of confusion for my brain!

Funny thing is that I count money and deal cards left-handed and didn't even know it until a friend pointed it out. Last year at a family reunion, a dear cousin mentioned "Gee, it's funny...I'm right-handed, but I deal cards and count money left-handed." We concluded it had to be genetic.

Lynda (who thinks hanging from the monkey bars is a perfectly acceptable way to read a cross-stitch chart)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography." ..................Paul Rodriguez..................................... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~