"Four million Britains can't be right by Alex Valentine
published about 1978, Observer ?
Four million people in Britain have something in common with Jack the Ripper. He was one of an unfortunate minority-the left-handed.
Unfortunate, because not only are they regarded as "odd" and "different" but the words that mean "left" all have unpleasant connotations.
The French word gauche also means clumsy, and the Latin sinister even has tones of evil.
Think too of the nicknames which are always given to the left-handers. They vary in different parts of the country but "cock-handed," "bang-handed," "cam-handed," "dolly-pawed," "cuddie-wifted" or just plain "squippy" all come to the same thing -that somehow or other all is not right with the left.
If it were just mild abuse it might not be so bad - the fact is that it's dammed difficult being a left-hander.
If you are left-handed you will have thought about the problem often enough. If not, you've probably given it a passing thought, and lightheartedly dismissed the difficulties.' But the three questions that should be asked are:
Why are people left-handed ?
Just how difficult is it to be left-handed ?
Can anything be done to make the left-handedness easier ?
The obvious and logical answer of the left-hander to the first question is "why not-why should it be a right-hander's world?"
And there is no real answer to that. It is certain that the majority of the world is right-handed, but beyond that there is only conjecture, theory, pseudo-science and folklore.
Some so-called experts say that it's because the brain is divided into two parts which control the opposite sides of the body-the left-hand part of the brain controls the right side of the body and the other way round.
Normally, this argument goes, the dominant part of the brain is on the left, therefore it controls the right-and that is supposed to explain why most people are right-handed.
Unfortunately for these theorists, studies of left-handed people do not show their brains have developed in any different way.
Another school of thought argues that it's all to do with the way in which the body is built. If you divide the human body in two from head to toe you will find that the right-hand side weights more than the left (there being more weight of liver and lungs on the right). So, says this theory, human beings tend to counter-balance their weight on the left foot, leaving the right foot and the right hand free for action.
Again that might be fine if there were any evidence that the bodies of left-handed people are any different from the rest. And there isn't.
The next guess is whether or not it's hereditary. This is now largely discredited, and since my right-handed wife and my right-handed self have three left-handed children, I'm not really surprised.
This in turn raises the question of whether or not left-handed children tend to copy each other, if not their parents. Again, it's inconclusive - for instance, of the Dionne Quintuplets, only one of the five was a left-handed.
By now it's getting into the realm of old wives' tales. It depends on which breast the baby was mainly fed on ?which arm it was carried about. . . whether it was bathed in a bath where the water ran out from left to right or right to left. . . .
Most left-handers have long since given up trying to find out. What they are more concerned with is the fact that they live in a right-handed world.
True, schools have now stopped forcing left-handed children to write with their other hand. Educational authorities have realised that this is likely to introduce nervous tensions into children (for instance, it is now, believed that the late King George VI suffered from a stammer because a tough governess at Buckingham Palace forced him to change his writing hand).
THE DIFFICULTY of writing with the left hand is obvious- the writing hand coves up what the person has written, and, before the days of the ball-point pen, smudged all the work.
But there are other less obvious handicaps that the left-hander has to fight against-the fact that potato peelers usually only have their cutting blades placed for right-handers, that irons and ironing boards are designed in such a way that when used by a left-hander the flex from the iron hangs over the work.
Knitting patterns are basically designed for right-handers, so are cork-screws and clockwork mechanisms- remember, for a left-handed person the natural motion is to turn the hand anti-clockwise.
But the left-handers are beginning to unite. in Britain they now have their own association run by Michael Barsley, a television producer and broadcaster, who has recently had his "Left Handed Book" published as a paperback by Pan.
The Left Handers' Association is agitating for legislation to recognise their difficulties, and for designers to think about them. They point out that even that most modern of all inventions-the computer-was designed for right-handed people.
They are also trying to get people to think of them as people, with certain handicaps which should be recognised without either ridicule or contempt.
It is, they point out, just a matter of some thought and consideration. There is no point in shouting at a left-handed child because it cannot copy the actions of a right-handed person who is demonstrating how to knit or tie a bow. The thing is to remember that the left-handed child uses opposite hands, so why not face the child and act as a "mirror" so that the child copies what it sees?
And, if you have a left-handed guest, why not put him or her (quietly and without making a big thing of it) at a left-handed corner of the table so that their elbow won't be jogged whilst they are holding a cup or glass?
Already, just off London's Carnaby Street, there's a special shop for left-'handers which has items like sauce-pans with lips that pour on either side, potato peelers with blades on both sides, left-handed scissors, left-handed ironing boards, and even left-handed playing cards.
It might be some consolation to left-handers to know that as well as Jack the Ripper they include such people as Leonardo da Vincl, Charlie Chaplin, Paul McCartney, Danny Kaye, Terence Stamp, Kim Novak, Denis Compton, Gary Sobers, Ann Haydon Jones and Rod Laver.
Indeed, the left-handers of the world ara turning up as one in every tenth person, and if you think in terms of any single race, colour or creed, who else makes up such a group ?
Maybe "Cack-handers of the World, Unite!" is not exactly the sort of slogan to set the world on fire, but to anyone who is left-handed in a right-handed world it's heavy propaganda."