By MEREDITH CARROLL
FORTY-TWO DAYS REMAIN UNTIL MY birthday, but unfortunately, the date which I anticipate more eagerly is still 151 days away.
Aug. 13 is Left-Handers Day — the only 24-hour period each year in which the 10 to 12 percent of us in the world born left-handed can rise up without shame against the oppressive right-handed global regime.
One study suggests that handedness is determined based on a gene-and-environment cocktail. Some researchers postulate that left-handers have a similar-handed relative, even though a specific chromosome has never been identified. Another theory claims that left-handed tendencies form in the womb or even sooner. Brain damage from trauma in the delivery room is a relatively new hypothesis explaining left-handed dominance, although it wouldn’t apply to me — my dad really wanted a son, so although I was a source of disappointment from the time of my first breath, my team of psychologists has never conclusively determined that I underwent any sort of trauma at that moment.
Nevertheless, I’m not in the clear, as trauma can strike left-handers at any point while journeying from the cradle to the grave.
According to statistics, it wouldn’t necessarily be a waste of time for me to start digging my grave now. On average, right-handed people live nine years longer than lefties. In fact, 2,500 left-handed people die each year using products designed for right-handed people.
Thankfully, power tools and meat-slicers play insignificant roles in my daily routine; otherwise I would be way more likely than the 88 to 90 percent of the population to lose a digit. But lefties are also more prone to broken bones, allergies, depression, schizophrenia, sleeping disorders and developing alcoholism, dyslexia and repetitive strain injury. Basically, my future is bleak.
Not so long ago, Catholic nuns in many American elementary schools used rulers to whack the wrists of left-handed students. Politically correct child endangerment laws presumably put an end to that practice,but the big guy upstairs clearly prefers righties, as evidenced in the Bible. Matthew 6:3 says:“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth.”
Left-handed bias isn’t limited to the church. Etymologists also harbor left-handed prejudices. The American Heritage Dictionary of the New Millennium defines “left-handed” as “awkward,”“maladroit” and “of doubtful sincerity.” Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus, First Edition, offers several synonyms for “left-handed,” including: “clumsy,” “backhanded,” “careless,” “heavy-handed” and “hypocritical.”
Still, despite the name-calling, life isn’t doom and gloom 24/7 for port-sided people. Economists at the University of Dublin say left-handed men earn 4 to 5 percent more per hour than their right-oriented co-workers. Researchers consistently find that lefties fare particularly well in tennis, baseball, swimming and fencing. Neil Armstrong gave southpaws on Earth and beyond a morale boost when he stepped on the moon with his left foot first. Four of the five original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed, as are polar bears and Kermit the Frog. Lefties adjust more readily to seeing underwater. (Hey, it could be useful. Aquaman, anyone?) A myth persists that southpaws are more artistic, and, according to the UK-based Left- Handers Club, generally more intelligent, imaginative, multitalented and better-looking than righties. Research from France’s University of Montpellier II show left-handed people have an advantage during combat, which, of course, lefties everywhere have known since 1976, when Rocky took down Apollo Creed with a surprise left hook in the first round at the Philadelphia Spectrum.
In spite of our fighting, creative spirits, though, moments remain when the left-handed hardships are seemingly never-ending. The minor but irritating obstacles faced daily by lefties include poorly designed scissors, right-handed desks, binders and spiral-bound notebooks, a limited selection of baseball gloves, supermarket and bank pens Krazy-Glued flush right to every surface, corkscrews that turn the wrong way, permanent ink smudges on our hands, computer mice forever affixed keyboard-right, wrist-watches with stems on the wrong side and anything with a pre-molded grip.
But as lefties have risen up and demanded equal rights, the market for left-handed products has slowly expanded. For instance, most left-handers probably thought they’d never see the day when they could buy a boomerang which, when thrown with the right hand, will dive directly into the ground. However, redemption is now ours for $27.91 for the Left Hand Boomerang 24-inch Skyrider on anythingleft-handed.co.uk.
Hey, we’ll take what we can get.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 15, 2007. Read the original PDF.