Happy Left Handers Day!

[MaybeAMoaner]

I’m not actually left handed but all 3 of my kids are!

What’s the best worst / thing about being left handed?

We are a household of 4 lefties, so we have everything set up to the left, so no problems in this house.

Self service tills are always the wrong way round for us left handers.

I found out too late you could get left handed chequebooks.

dd primary school teacher taught her how to write so she didnt smudge the page
she is artistic - is that related?
i tried to buy her left handed scissors for her needlework recently but they were far too expensive, sadly.
she did have left handed scissors as a child cutesy of my dm

Self service tills are always the wrong way round for us left handers.
Are they? The screen and the barcode reader are directly in front of me. Card reader slightly to the right I suppose but not to a degree that it's any issue. I don't get this one either.

Many years ago my right handed dm tried to teach left handed me how to knit. It did not go well and aged nearly 50 I still can’t knit.

@Komandoo yes I have found that. When playing tennis I can use both hands. Love being a lefty. When writing cards using an inky pen, Iput a piece of paper of my work to stop my hand from smudging it or blow vigorously after each word! I have smudged many a gift card before and it pays off to write slowly!

I have a left handed kid - where does it come from, from comments some have full lefties families but others it's random. Is it genetic? Ans why is it a minority surely it should be 50/50 . Would love to know more about the 'science' (simply put)

I never had a problem with knitting or crocheting and I didn't actually realise there was a left- handed way to knit until recently! My bugbear is scissors, ac they leave an indentation just above my thumb. I use a Y shaped peeler. I like being a leftie!

Happy Left handers' day! My username comes from me being left handed.

@Asherline I think it is just random. Which ever hand you feel most comfortable with I guess. I could be totally wrong though.

@LeftyLou that's what it seems but must be a reason somewhere , maybe not discovered yet. My kids grandad is colour blind and looking into it genetically it affects different genders differently and little chance of his kids having it but more for grandkids. Just don't understand how but so much must be genetically linked somehow

I can tick! Writing is ok if I try very hard but not very beautiful. And trying to write on a whiteboard was fairly horrendous which was a bit of an issue in my former life as a teacher. Not the best example for the class! My mum often winces watching me do certain tasks as it looks so 'cack handed' to her but makes sense to me. Weirdly when driving I'll often perform a revering manoeuvre (eg a kind of three point turn to get out of parents drive and face down their hill) in the opposite set of movements that my right handed passenger would do it. I also remember doing colour wheels at school and myself and the other left handed child in the class both did ours in an anti clockwise direction whereas the rest of the class did theirs clockwise. I wouldn't do that now because I've learnt the 'correct' way to do things like that.

Was taught to knit and crochet right handed with no issues. Don't have any problems with my shark vacuum, kettle or self service tills. When I was at primary school and had to use a fountain pen my teacher made me attach some blotting paper to my hand with a series of elastic bands. It sort of worked but eventually cut off my circulation so bit swings and roundabouts that one. Definitely need left handed scissors but I find that a lot that you buy now seem to work held in either hand but my cutting out isn't the best, which I entirely blame for the lack of left handed scissors in playgroup when I should have been learning this vital skill!

When I used to smoke I held the cigarette in my left hand which meant if I was smoking while driving I would cross my arm over myself to flick the ash out of the window 😳 that's not a downfall of being left handed though that's just youthful idiocy and I'm glad I saw sense on that and just gave up smoking completely!

My parents are both right handed and produced two righties and two lefties. I'm obviously left handed and my exh was naturally left handed but forced to write with his right hand at school (he grew up in quite an....insular area. He was at primary school in the mid 90s!). Both our kids are right handed and have clearly betrayed me on this matter. I still feel a complete misplaced sense of pride when someone notices and says 'ooooh you're left handed' as if I've got anything at all to do with it!

Proud lefty here with one of my DC left handed too.
When I was a kid I was frustrated mostly by Tin openers and potato peelers but they make these for everyone now.
I find the door handles always being on the right quite annoying and I despair for my DS handwriting (mine never much improved!). Otherwise I am easily adapted to our right handed world.

I write with my hand slightly below the line so that it doesn't smudge. I don't understand how right handed people write though, with the pen going towards your hand. Doesn't your hand get in the way?!

I learnt to use scissors in my right hand. I'm grateful for this, because left handed scissors aren't usually available.

My biggest problem is that cake forks are always right handed

The inheritance of handedness is complicated because there are multiple genes involved. Also, it is possible to influence which hand someone uses so handedness varies across culture.

I am left handed, DH is right handed, we have 3DC. The eldest was always very clearly left handed and footed, the middle child very clearly right handed and footed. The battle was on for DC3! He was very slow to start mark making and even in the early years at school he would use either hand to write. He now (at 9) uses his left hand to write but is right footed and he plays racquet sports with his right hand!

The hardest thing for me was having a mother who clearly thought I was making a fuss about being left handed. I never had any left handed tools as a child and anything I found hard was my fault and nothing to do with the tools being designed for a right hander. I'm actually very good with my hands and never had a problem with right handed scissors (I rotate my hand slightly so I can see the cutting blade) but struggled with serrated knives, getting a left handed bread knife in adulthood was a revelation. Mum still e.g. lays my place setting as if I was right handed so I sit down and have to move my glass and spoon to the correct side (I use the knife and fork right handed), when I was a child she was very critical of my handwriting and how I used a knife etc. All completely unnecessary. Thankfully I had a lovely teacher at primary school who had a son who was left handed and she taught me to angle paper as I was writing so I wrote down the sheet rather than across which made a massive difference. And DM has had a taste of being left handed when she picked up left handed scissors by accident at my house and really struggled with them .

My dad and daughter are lefties. I write left handed but do everything else right handed.
I hate it when I smudge a greetings card. I also find writing on the whiteboard tricky (work in a school).
The good thing is that I can help my own child and children in class who are also lefties with tips I have found useful.

Oh and I also avoid, "write / cut with your other hand," as my headteacher used to say to me in primary school.

I love being left handed.
3 kids... Third is left handed.
I can write neatly now. It was an ink pen that made me concentrate on writing.
Scissors, right handed, knives... I use whats given but i do it the other way... If that makes sense. I try to teach the right handed children to chop onions, cut bread... But we have to swap the way we do it... I never think about knives being sharpened the wrong way... Maybe it would make me a bettter chopper.
Mouse use is right handed.
Thumb on phone is right handed but i can use both together far quicker than some.. (my teen)
The kettle thing is very interesting. I hate my kitchen because i cant use the kettle in my left hand. Something to think about when giving youngest tea making lessons.

I am left handed. I was in a Catholic school in reception and the nun in charge used to discriminate me as she thought that I was using the " hand of the Devil". It stopped when my (very young) mum finally understood that I was left handed and had a go at her as "she was trying to set me right". I am still a practicing Catholic: you find stupid cows everywhere....

DH is left handed, struggles with scissors and serrated knives. His biggest problem is that he works in a restaurant and can’t use the slicing machine with the guard on

Hello should have had 🥂 when I lunched with my lefty friend yesterday
Can I recommend “Right hand, Left hand” by Chris McManus as an interesting read about asymmetry

I’m left handed in that I write with my left hand but everything else I do right handed. No idea why, no one ever tried to stop me using my left hand, I think I was just copying everything else. I used to go to tennis coaching as a kid and drove the instructor mad because I would never use a backhand shot, I just switched the racket to my other hand 😆

I will admit that my handwriting is pretty crappy. My teacher when I was learning cursive writing was proper old school and hated that I was left handed. She never told me to turn the page etc so I could never see what I was doing. By the time I got a new, younger, teacher it was too late. I was writing something at work the other day and had a retired teacher comment on my ‘interesting’ pencil grip.

Best thing is that everyone leaves my sharp dressmaking scissors alone because they just can't use them.

I can't think of any bad things really. I used to smudge ink across the page, but after using a few YouTube videos I figured out how to write without curving my hand round. And my writing is pretty neat these days. To the point where people comment on it.

Worst Parts: Writing on a white board is super stressful and my hand allways gets ink on it
The design on your mug allways facing inwards
Ned flanders was definitely onto something with the leftorium

@DappledThings yes they are, you put your shopping on the left and have to pass it over with your right hand, as a left hander I am more comfortable putting on the right side and scanning it with my left hand then putting it on the left surface.

[quote Somanysocks]@DappledThings yes they are, you put your shopping on the left and have to pass it over with your right hand, as a left hander I am more comfortable putting on the right side and scanning it with my left hand then putting it on the left surface.[/quote]
I tend to hold things with both hands when scanning. I suppose it's a bit awkward when I do use my left hand to move things to the right but no more awkward than it must be for a right hander to reach for each item on the left in the first place. I think it's over thinking it to consider self checkouts as handed.

I had been going through ticket barriers for years before it occurred to me that the slot/card reader was on the right and this did mildly inconvenience me.