• Crabhands@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The first time I picked up a crayon, I used my left hand. My parents were concerned but waited it out. After watching me use my left hand the next few times they decided to convert me.

    I was brought to a special Sunday school service where right is right. They started with drawing, then moved on to writing. Eventually they worked on my instincts, by throwing things at me, at random, to ensure I used the right hand to catch. I was slapped with a yard stick in the knuckles whenever I used the wrong hand.

    Leftiism exists. Parents think they are helping but it’s caused all sorts of problems in my life.

        • demlet@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          When I was a kid in the 80s I knew an older man who said when he was a kid his school tied his left arm down behind his back to force him to use his right hand.

        • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfOP
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          1 year ago

          Which is strange given that so many world-class renowned inventors and artists are all left handed

          • Magnetar@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            I’d be careful trying to deduce something from that (to my knowledge not too studied) factoid. It could (pure speculation) also be, that children growing up with the freedom to use whichever hand they wanted at a time when that wasn’t generally the case also had other freedoms like developing their creativity.

      • abysmalpoptart@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The word “sinister” is used to mean something evil and conniving, but it really just means “left,” whereas “Dexter” is “right,” but dexterous is now used to mean very skillful, agile.

    • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My grandma got her left-handedness beaten out of her by the nuns. Paragons of virtue, the whole lot of them, right up there with Teresa.

    • YaketySax@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      I wish this was unbelievable. When/where was this? I’m guessing the US and hopefully a long time ago.

      • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfOP
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        1 year ago

        I have seen lefties get in on their hand and I always wonder why they don’t turn the paper and write towards themselves. That was the hack I learned from early. It also solves the notebook ring problem.

        • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Yes, I know some people who do this and it’s easy if you do it from early on, but learning it later is like relearning writing altogether. It ain’t impossible but neither is it easy

    • duckington@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah but most of the time if you are just writing a fresh page it’s gonna be in that orientation, especially like back in school where it might be for an assignment or something, so more often than not it would be like that

    • BloodSlut@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I personally think that its not as much as an issue as thicker notebooks creating an uneven writing surface.

      Being right handed, your hand is supported at the same level as the writing surface until the very end of a line, where you typically leave more space.

      Being left handed, you start every line of writing without your hand being on the same surface as the writing surface, which especially sucks if you have issues with handwriting (which I annecdotedly notice is more common in lefties).

    • Batman@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I flip my whole notebook over and use it back to front. Had a friend buy me one made that way for lefties once as a gift, it was actually really nice to have the cover face the right way for once!

    • SIGSEGV@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I had a left-handed friend in high-school that just oriented his notebook with the rings on the right (180 degrees rotated).

  • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    And who could forget granny’s: when you’re left handed, “YOU’RE THE LITERAL SPAWN OF SATAN” ok, dear?

      • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        Eh, living with themselves was punishment enough. I’m just sorry for the few level-headed outcasts who had to live thinking they were weird or pretending to fit in so they wouldn’t be persecuted.

      • demlet@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well the plot twist is, they were generally exceptionally smart at what they needed to know to survive. It’s easy to forget how difficult life was for average people up until fairly recently. Like less than a century ago. Education and literacy really weren’t a priority.

        • bleistift2@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I’m not sure if not discriminating against lefties, homosexuals, “colored”, women in general, “witches” in particular, muslims, jews, basically anone non-Christian or even non-{insert denomination} counts as “education and literacy”.

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Since handedness is genetic, there is a chance that that’s what she was told when she learned to use the right hand (pun intended)

    • petrescatraian@libranet.de
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      1 year ago

      @Gsus4 In my country kids were beaten with rullers on their hands at school until they were able to write right-handed IIRC. Not sure if this brought to them anything else than trauma anyway.

      @sabreW4K3

    • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      My grandma is left handed, yes she now can write with both hands because they tried to beat it out of her, they did not entirely succeed.

  • TheSlyFox@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Everything I do something wrong or I’m clumsy my mother blames it on “it’s because he’s left-handed” been this way for 36 years now.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I agree with all but the left one. From my experience, I’m the only one NOT noticing how anyone writes while I get “oh, you’re left-handed” constantly.

    But the smudging part reminded me of something that happened to me:

    I had a maths teacher who always had one of us do the homework on one of those overhead projector foil things and show them in front of class. I had a geometry task and would always smear the rewritable pen with my palms, or mess the lines up because I had to hold my hand awkwardly high. He did make me do it over and over again because he thought it was sloppy. My mum tried to talk to the teacher and the principal, that I as a lefty kind of faced an uphill battle there, so having me re-do it when I wasn’t able to do it the first time was not really going anywhere. The teacher only told her that I needed to learn ways around my left-handedness. So my mum had me do the homework with a permanent marker. No smearing anymore. The teacher even had a smug face on and was all like “See? You can do it after all”. That smugness was gone when he tried to clean up the foil. No one said that he had to like the ways I found to deal with such BS.

  • ScrivenerX@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I use scissors exclusively with my left hand just to point out to any lefty around that you don’t need to buy special scissors.

    • Batman@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      As a lefty who didn’t get my first pair until my 40’s, they aren’t necessary but boy do they make cutting on a line WAY easier. Crazy differences in difficulty level for a clean cut.

    • BloodSlut@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It depends, most scissors now are practically ambidextrous. Some though, have really angled interiors of the handles that make them painful to use for an extended duration.

    • demlet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Using normal, right-handed scissors with the right hand works noticeably better. Cleaner cuts, and you can tell the handle is meant to be held with the right hand. I’ve used cheap/dull scissors that wouldn’t even work with the left hand. Oh man, let me tell you about scissors…

      • Squids@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Funny you mention cheap scissors because I’ve always thought that expensive scissors were more of an issue because they tend to be super specialised and as a result super handed

        • demlet@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Hmm, that’s an interesting point. Maybe middle of the road scissors are ironically the best for lefties.

    • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      Every time I use right handed scissors I have Soo many issues, the paper usually folds or rips instead of giving me a clean cut, unless I used a certain part of the scissors to cut and no more. To the point that although it was uncomfortable, I used my right hand to cut things with scissors.

      When I got older I bout myself a dedicated set of left handed scissors… fucking amazing, I can make clean cuts with my dominant hand utilising the entire length of the scissors, and it works every time.

      And those scissors are now the sharpest scissors in the house because I’m the only one who uses them, the other pairs of right handed scissors in the house are blunt af and barely cut even when I use my right hand.

  • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I love being married to my left-handed wife. We can cook on the same stove together, we can read and hold hands, we can eat without bumping each other so long as we sit correctly. So many things are easier for us because one of us is a lefty.

      • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Doesn’t that turn the void of that panel null though? I thought that the point was that you get your hand dirty because, when writing from left to right with your left hand, you’re more likely to stomp over what you’ve already written.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      When you write you accumulate graphite dust or ink onto your hand. Even if you lift your hand between words, the movement of your hand resting on your previous letters makes it happen.

  • neutronst4r@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The second one is stupid though… The rings get in the way 50% of the time regardless of handedness. If you are right handed, writing on the back of the page sucks. If you are left handed, writing on the front sucks.

    • Squids@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Nowhere - everyone hates us because we’re too busy fucking with what hand we do sports with

      Alternatively, nowhere because you just kinda still end up functionally right handed anyways because everything’s built that way and it’s easier to just go with the flow even if you can technically use either hand.

      • Slwh47696@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I didn’t even really know I was ambidextrous until I was like 15 or 16. I discovered I could write with both hands, and I started doing a bunch of stuff left handed and found out it was pretty easy for me.

        Then my dad told me that when I was a little kid I played hockey shooting both ways until I chose shooting left. And he said I always did everything both ways. Just took me until a little later in life to discover on my own.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It is advantageous in ancient combat though. When everyone is carrying a shield with their left hand and their sword on their right hand, the leftie can strike their relatively unprotected opponent’s right shoulder, unless the opponent is in formation and has an ally to its right.

    • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Also helpful when storming a tower; spiral staircases are generally spiralled to give a right-handed defender the advantage against a right-handed attacker

    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      But as long as neither you nor your opponent plan to fight in formation, it’s all good! This “fighting in formation” thing probably isn’t going to catch on.

  • Aux@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Handedness doesn’t really matter, it’s all about how you were taught (or weren’t) to do things. For example, my brother is left-handed, but he uses a mouse in the right hand. I’m right handed, but I’m holding the fork in the right hand.