To be annoyed with Call the Midwife

[BlueThursday]

I've been rewatching from the start and of all the things to be annoyed about it’s Dr Turner writing left handed 🤣

Clearly as I know nothing about medicine or midwifery they could be showing all sorts that’s wrong and I’d have no clue but this is bugging me.

I think it’s time for a cuppa!

In France it definitely was a thing for 'south-paws' to be made to write right-handed. In this country less so surely? MIL (very early Boomer) was ridiculed for writing left-handedly as a child but continued to do so.

It probably depended on the school/parents. My Grandfather was born in 1900 and he was left handed so hasn't been "thrashed" our of him.

Left hander here, born 1961 and it was never any issue for me in school,looking back never even thought about it tbh. I think I probably hold my pen differently and for some reason cannot use left handed scissors, probably because that was the only option in school those days.

MIL is 82. She’s left handed. It wasn’t thrashed out of her.

Yes, by the twentieth century, I don’t think it was to do with being sinful just the practicalities of pushing the pen and smearing the ink
It seems quite reasonable that a left hander would revert when not supervised.

My dad is 69 and didn’t have it thrashed out of him, he’s stills proud leftie.

Absolute witch.

FiL was born in 1948, he writes with his left hand. Not all schools "thrashed it out" of left-handers.

My dad is left handed and 80. It was never an issue for him at school.

Tbh even in the 90s the left handed equipment was shit.and only ever 1 or 2 of.

Me and db are both left handed born in the 50’s.
The only problem I encountered was teachers not knowing how to teach sport or crafts to a left handed person.
Consequently I can’t play tennis and can’t knit, not really affected my life much.
My dgf was born in the 1890’s and was made to use his right hand. I think his left was tied behind his back.

I was born in the 50s and never forced to use my right hand. However, being left-handed means you have a greater tendancy to auto-immune disorders. I've got a thyroid problem.

I was born in 63. It wasn't an issue at all (especially once I learned to angle the page to avoid smudging). We were even given left handed fountain pens.

One of the founders of the Anything Left Handed shop in London was a family friend. He must have been born in the 1920s so maybe Dr Turner could have been left handed.

(Left handed corkscrews are excellent for winding up your ight handed friends 😁)

Shocking, isn't it? I look at these comments and then realise that my native Netherlands abolished corporal punishment in schools in 1820.

I’m not sure if it would have been thrashed out of him by this point in time? He was presumably at school in the 20s/30s and the world was a bit more enlightened by that point.

My father was born in the 1920s and he had it thrashed out of him.

My father was born in 42, he was left handed. Both his parents were left handed too.

I never asked any of them if their schools tried to force them into being right handed, but they certainly all wrote with their left hands as adults.

(In case anyone is interested, I'm not left handed but both my DC are).

The entire show has abandoned any pretence of the mores of the time for 21st century wokeness so that'll be one item on a very long list.

Careful OP, if the producers see this there'll be a whole episode in the next series about how he single(left)-handedly stopped that practice at his old school.

My father was born in 1916, ALAB, but switched at school, and did most things right handed thereafter, but he kept the skill of left writing and mirror writing as a show off thing like wiggling his eyebrows! also being able to use tools such as screwdrivers in confined places. Being able to tie knots left handed was useful to him in the Boys Brigade and the Engineers when it came to teaching them to righties. No violence was involved in the switching.
A while back there was an article in New Scientist which compared handedness in humans and other primates. It seems that in chimps, there are roughly equal proportions of left and right, say about 45%, and the remainder are ambiclumsy, with no dominant hand. When the researchers confined their human sample to families containing lefties, similar distributions were found. It seems that what is inherited is righthandedness, and righties find using their lefts much more difficult than lefties find using their rights. Right handers in families with lefties (I am one) are probably less binary - I can use a screwdriver in my left hand if necessary.
I am appalled that someone born in '95 was switched. My school never mentioned it from long before that. We did have a leftie art teacher with a strong personality - and me insisting on lefthanded scissors, and children sitting so elbows didn't bump.
And as for it being sinful - do I notice a preponderance of religious victims of the dextral police above?
Dad could not switch back on leaving school. He went into accountancy, and offices were arranged so desks and ledgers were illuminated from windows on the left. Also there were mnemonics about which side credits and debits were on, based on the position of the window. He had a very neat hand.

My mum was born in 1937. She was encouraged to change to her right hand at school but never punished. She is very left handed - cannot do any of the everyday tasks right handed. No way could she change. She even learnt shorthand left-handed!

Oh no with Sheila Simpering "oh Patrick " quick get the thread deleted 😂

I think my hidden sinistral self was enjoying using expressions from another realm. Hope you didn't object to ALAB and binary. I am imagining a world haunted by LRAs opposed to LERDs, which would see absolutely ridiculous, as should the one we are now trapped in. Dinner ladies being sacked for being sinisterphobes.

That's really interesting. My brother's a leftie and has had bad psoriasis. What's the medical connection?

My MIL was born in the 30’s and was always left handed.

My grandma (1923), dad & both aunts (1940s) were all left handed & were not prevented from using their left hands. Two of my children are also left handed & it is frustrating when so many things are made just a little bit more difficult than they need be … my kids always notice other left handed people.

I've been googling ALAB and not getting anywhere, can you enlighten a 'righty' please?