Are You Also a Leftie?

The world is not made for us so we make it

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

At age six, I collided with the reality that the world is not made for left-handed people.

When I started primary school, I began writing with an ink pen, in a a small ring binder with two ring holes. None of that is suitable for a left-handed child.

I found out I was left-handed when I seriously started making letters on the lines.

The biggest challenge was figuring out how to position the page to avoid the binder rings. Then, how to hold the pen so the ink would stay in place and not be dragged by the outline of my hand… leaving ink trails spreading to the right, smearing every letter. And finally, how to keep the pages from tearing and slipping out of the holes. My hand and shirt turning blue were not that important.

There weren’t many left-handed girls in my class, I was at a catholic school for girls. I don’t know how the others managed. As for me, my parents received a steady stream of notes about my messiness, my binder in a deplorable state, and my lack of order. Luckily, they didn’t care.

There was no option to switch pens or paper. I could only change two things myself.

The method. And the hand.

I started with the method, the one I still use to this day. When people watch me write, they exclaim: How can you write like that? But my handwriting is beautiful, everything neat. That’s what counts, isn’t it?

Generally, I place the page vertically and write each letter from top to bottom. My hand never touches a single word. The ink or whatever I’m writing with, stays perfectly dry.

Secondary school brought the task to write on the blackboard. Writing left-handed on a vertical surface doesn’t work. Well, not for me. I practiced until my right hand could.

Today I can say I am ambidextrous in many tasks in life and by personal training. Depends what suits me best in the moment or the circumstances. I kick a ball with right but if needed, left can do. Scissors not, only right hand. I eat like a leftie but can switch if for neighbours, it’s uncomfortable.

On paper, my right-handed writing isn’t very pretty. On the blackboard, it is. I have no idea why.

When I moved to the Netherlands, two weeks in, I fell off my bicycle with my dog and broke my left wrist. Surgery. A cast. The entire process of registration at the town council, still analog back then, I did with my right hand. Not very elegant.

Me, in my still-Nepali outfits in Rotterdam, suddenly belonged to the category of semi-literate in the records. I wrote slowly, my handwriting jagged and broken. Since I didn’t speak Dutch, nobody asked me anything. I didn’t mind much, to be honest.

I just laughed.

This is the answer to my own prompt: are you a “leftie”? If so, what challenges have you faced in life being a leftie? If not you, a child, sibling, or parent? Are you exclusively left-handed, or do you use your right hand for specific tasks?

Thanks for reading my story.

Adrienne Beaumont, the great patron behind the unprecedented splendor of The Challenged has more prompts for you in April.

Join us! It’s fun.

[embed]April Arrives With More Writing Prompts for the Challenged We are here at the 25% mark…scary!medium.com