If you are left handed you know just as well as I do that it’s tough living in a right handed world. Here are some fun facts I found that any lefty can relate to.
– 7-10% of the adult population are left handed.
– Studies have tried to show that the life span of left handed person is nearly nine years shorter than that of a right handed person. Due to the left side of the brain being less developed than people who use their right hand and thus the left side of their brain.
– Left Handedness is more common in males than females
– In the 18th and 19th centuries left handedness was considered “bad” and many times it was “beat out” of people who possessed it. Schools forced children to write with their right hand, society shunned people who used their left hand
– In sports, especially in the United States, a left hander can be known as a “southpaw. This label originated from the design of baseball stadiums. They are designed so that batters are facing the east to avoid getting the sun in their eyes. Therefore if you have a left handed pitcher they are throwing with their south arm…thus southpaw.
– Society often sees left handedness as a disadvantage simply because we live in a right handed world. Common objects such as scissors, knifes, guns and computer mouses are designed for right handed people. There does exist left handed tools, but they are often hard to come by in everyday life.
– Left handed people tend to write with their hand curled around the pencil due to the fact that their left handedness was not taken into account when they were taught to write. The “angle” at which sample letters and words were written for young students can only be made using the right hand, therefore young leftys tried to copy that exact handwriting and discovered they could only do it by curling their hand around the pen.
– Most left handed people are really bad a driving a stick shift car.
– If you grab a coffee mug handle with your left hand the picture will almost always be facing away from you.
– There have been six known left handed presidents in the history of U.S.; George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton,James Garfield, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ron Reagan.
– Hold a pencil with your right hand and you can read the writing on it, hold it with your left hand and the writing on a pencil is upside down.
– Juniata College is the only college that offers a $1000 scholarship to its left handed students.
– Most left handed people use their right hand for some tasks ONLY because its the only way to complete that task. (I.E. left handed people golf right because lefty golf clubs have to be custom made and are expensive)
There it is. What do you think? Is left handedness a privilege or a disease? In my opinion I don’t think I will live a shorter life because of my “affliction”, but I do agree, I am a lefty living in a right handed world.
References:
http://www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/left-hand.htm
http://www.neurodiversity.com/lefthandedness.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed
