\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right-handed people use the left side of their brain, so left-handers are the only people in their right mind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Thus read the message on a T-shirt I once owned. I picked it up at a yard sale in Columbia, Mo., in 1974.<\/p>\n
Except for dining with members of my wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s side of the family I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay much attention to my left-handedness, certainly not thinking of it as a handicap \u00e2\u20ac\u201d despite what much literature and public opinion say about it.<\/p>\n
As for Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family, well, her late mother, Velma, her sisters Donna and Beth are all left-handed. That means that when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sit down to dine, we needed to choreograph an elaborate dance to place us in such a way that we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bump one another.<\/p>\n
When Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father, a right-hander, was still with us, and I joined the dinner table, that meant four of the seven of us will have been left-handers, and that kind of proportion is unusual. We represent only 10 percent of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s population and 57 percent of those at the dinner table.<\/p>\n
In the following paragraphs, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be introducing a host of terms to avoid repeating \u00e2\u20ac\u0153left-hander.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But I warn fellow southpaws, those of you in your right mind, that some of the terms fail to compliment.<\/p>\n
Look up the term in a dictionary and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sinister.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, what do we have here? One dictionary says of sinister, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now compare that with the corresponding word for right-handed: dexterous. That means handy, able to perform deeds. What are we sinister people, awkward? Chopped liver?<\/p>\n
Yes, exactly. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yet another word that falls under the rubric. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re now awkward. That makes one wonder whether Webster or some other dictionary compiler once observed sinister people doing chores clumsily and simply assumed we sinister fellows were all thumbs.<\/p>\n
But wait \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clumsy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one additional connotation to the condition that the majority of the world believes we suffer from. I like the argument that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Everybody is born right-handed, but on the other hand, lefties are the ones who recover.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poke around more dictionaries: We are seen by dictionarians as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gauche.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Anything one says in French by necessity is elegant, poetic, flowing. Anything you call another person in French is construed as a compliment.<\/p>\n
Except for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gauche.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And what does the dictionary say about gaucherie? We \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lack ease or grace; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re unsophisticated and socially awkward.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, on the one hand, I can concede that point.<\/p>\n
In the past I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written about my underwhelming performance on the dance floor, that time when I escorted Vivian Arvizo, the then-Miss Indian America, to a banquet in Gallup, in her honor. I went there expecting to enjoy a meal and pleasant conversation. Instead, the emcee asked Vivian and me to have the first dance. And that era, the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, came shortly after dancing switched from a graceful, rhythmic partnership to the individual gyrations of two people simultaneously seized by fits. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Awkward,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clumsy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gauche\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: all those terms applied to me that night.<\/p>\n
The only dance I ever enjoyed I called the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Y-Dance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I liked walking the woman to the middle of the dance floor, holding her and … and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Y-Dance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pursue a few other descriptions the rest of you conform to. You right-handers are, according to one dictionary, adroit, which means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clever or skillful at using hands or mind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And the rest of us are not? True, we can all praise the pianist \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whose adroitness comes through,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hard-pressed to find a complimentary word for a left-hander who plays as well.<\/p>\n
Notice how the right hand does most of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dexterous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153adroit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d work on the keyboard, whereas the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sinister\u00e2\u20ac\u009d hand gets relegated to endless \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oom-pahs.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
One dictionary even calls us \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dubious\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153insincere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t an abundance of words to describe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153adroit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d people, probably because not much needs to be said of the person who does everything \u00e2\u20ac\u0153right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
But yet, the world, especially the baseball world, concocts terms like southpaw and portsider. And notice how many people have been given nicknames based solely on which hand they use to throw a ball, pick up a fork or write.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, we lefties are accustomed to harmless comments: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re signing that check with the left hand; I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been implored in school to attempt switching from our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sinister\u00e2\u20ac\u009d hand to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dexterous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one.<\/p>\n
One classmate of yesteryear, whose penmanship made even mine look pretty, was urged by our homeroom teacher, Sister Mary Escriba Bi\u00c3\u00a9n, to use her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153orthodox\u00e2\u20ac\u009d hand. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard that such a switch often caused speaking problems. Months later, when I asked the young girl how everything had gone, she was speechless.<\/p>\n
The fact that four of our last seven presidents were gauche doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to appease those not in their right mind. We still get verbally eviscerated by terms like left-handed compliment. And we usually play left field.<\/p>\n
International Left-hander\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Day ended on Aug. 13. Out of curiosity, I invited Facebook friends to identify themselves if they were of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dubious\u00e2\u20ac\u009d persuasion.<\/p>\n
Almost immediately I received posts from Amanda Pacheco, Mark Cassidy, Adam Anthony Crespin, JoAnn Martinez, Barbara Dorris, Sherrie Doke, Robert Duran III, Jennifer Williams, Julie Kowalski, Christian Monta\u00c3\u00b1o, Connie Trujillo, Lorilee Heron, Mike Price, Christella Vallejos and Ben Moffett.<\/p>\n
Moffett claims to be such a lefty that he chews food on the left side of his mouth. And Jody Stege asked if being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153leftist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d qualifies.<\/p>\n
Sorry, Jody!<\/p>\n
To my fellow members of the gauche and sinister coalition: We know our lefts, so let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get left down to work and do the left thing.<\/p>\n
Even if we appear sinister in doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right-handed people use the left side of their brain, so left-handers are the only people in their right mind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thus read the message on a T-shirt I once owned. I picked it up at a yard sale in Columbia, Mo., in 1974. Except for dining with members of my wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s side of the family I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}