Maree’s musings

ON the OTHER HAND …

A few weeks ago I had an unfortunate altercation with some boiling water – filling a hottie, if you must know – which resulted in a rather nasty burn to my right hand and wrist. However, it’s not all bad. The usual hassles: no showering, swimming, hair-washing etc, but my piano playing and writing continue and luckily the experience inspired the subject of this month’s column.

As luck would have it, I’m left-handed. [In fact, it’s got nothing to do with luck, but I won’t bore you with the science. Google it!] This has never bothered me, despite being in the approximately ten percent minority; I’ve survived in a right-handed world. In the past, ‘left’ was often associated with all sorts of sinister [from Latin: left, but also unlucky] things. 

Left-handed children were considered disadvantaged and to be fair, there was an element of truth in that. Try writing with a ‘dip pen’ if you can find one, using your left hand, without making dreadful smudges all over your work. I still remember the inkwells were on the right-hand side of those little wooden school desks lined up in military precision rows. Not to mention scratching holes in the paper with the nib. It was hard work; and a couple of my childhood schoolfriends even had their left hands tied behind their backs but not me. Whew!

Later on in my school years, using that modern invention, a ballpoint pen, was better, but it was still a hassle when writing from left to right. Try it, you right-handers. Pencils were sort of OK, but not allowed when you got past the ‘primers’ and became a big kid. [An aside: I now know the origin of the word ‘penpusher’.] Writing from right to left or even vertically would have helped. No chance; we had to do everything right. Today of course, I’m using my keyboard. With both hands. So everything’s alright.

Well, not entirely. Unfortunately the word right also means correct and proper, so the prejudice persists. Who hasn’t heard of a left-handed screwdriver or a similarly described compliment? Hopefully, this sort of stigma is less common these days and us kack-handed southpaws with two left feet can get onto the right track along with you other lot. If all else fails, we can join the Left-Handers Club, founded in 1990 and celebrate August 13^th as International Left-Handers Day. I reckon I’ll be healed by then!

In the interim, I’ve been keeping cheerful when sympathetic friends offer to lend a hand [how does that work??] or provide some handy hints, and simply reply with the trite suggestion that if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll just go to a local secondhand shop for another one. As you will gather, I can still laugh, as I did the other day at the movies [no hands required], when reading the credits I discovered a ‘hand double’ on the staff. Just what I need to fill my hottie!