Aug 13th is International Left Hander’s Day 

This year International Left Hander’s Day is on August 13.   You may be thinking and…? 

I’m left-handed, my Granny was left-handed and so is one of our four children!  For those out there who are also left-handed you will understand how at times this can be annoying when the whole world appears to be designed correctly for right-handed people!  

So many everyday tools and utensils are difficult for us: scissors, can openers, spiral notebooks and many, many more. Writing is one of the awkward ones, and I don’t write like many lefties who hold their hand at an angle; I still smudge my own writing and as mentioned, spiral notebooks are horrible! 

Left-handed statistics and historical beliefs 

*Between 10 and 12 percent of the world’s population is left-handed. 

*The rise over generations of left-hander adults reflects the social stigma that used to be aimed at us.  For Baby Boomers born between 1945 to 1965, only 5% of people were identified as left-handed. There probably were far more, but many children were forced to use their right hand as their dominant hand. Of course, this doesn’t change those people’s genes, therefore as being left-handed has lost its stigma, the children of those Baby Boomers who were forced to change their natural ‘handedness’ has not been forced on their children who have their parents’ gene. Hence the numbers are rising. 

*Recent research has shown that handedness is a moderately heritable trait. 

*Although not proven definitively, research suggests that left-handed stroke patients recover faster, and this may be an advantage, due to brain plasticity. Left-handers have a more distributed language network, and they rely more on both hemispheres of their brain for motor skill, which potentially makes them more resilient to stroke-related damage. 

*Language even reinforces that right-handed is correct!  In French the word for left is ‘gauche’, which can also mean clumsy. The Italian Sinistra, the Latin for sinister is left hand. In English, the word left comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘lyft’ which means weak. Also, the word right also means ‘correct’. 

*In many parts of the world (particularly Asia), using your left-hand is considered rude or unclean, and therefore in those countries to hand over things to others, or to eat with your left hand is thought of as bad behaviour. 

*Left-handedness was also seen as a sign of the Devil in the past, so during the Middle Ages in Britain being left-handed could mean you’d be accused of being a witch and burnt at the stake! 

*Left-handed people tend to have a higher degree of ambidexterity than right-handers, because they have to deal with living in a right-handed world. 

Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, Winston Churchill, Prince William and his great-grandfather, George VI though the latter’s’ Father George V was forced to write with his right hand. Oprah Winfrey, Sir Paul McCartney (plays a left-handed guitar), Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, and Matt Groening, who created the Simpsons, and if you notice, Bart uses his left hand to write lines on the blackboard at beginning of the show! So those of you who like me are left-handed – we are in good company!