Being A Southpaw (a.k.a. Left-handed)

I'm left handed but the watch is also on my left hand.

There are some things I do right handed even though I'm not a true mixed handed person. My left arm is definately a bit stronger than my right, I know that. I think my left eye is better too.

I'm anayltical at times I guess-but it's hard to say because my ADHD brain finds analyzing stuff hard sometimes lol but I'm also extremely creative. I stink at math but that's due to learning disability.

 

Anybody here can write ambidextrously? I've tried writing with my right hand just for kicks and I've got to say it really sucks. Looks like I was back in kindergarten! :lol: :lol:

All throughout my schooling, people would say my handwriting, both print and script/cursive, was really neat and lovely and then they would comment that that it was because I was a lefty. Anyone else here get that comment...that their writing was nice because they were a lefty?

 

I can sort of write with both hands, but my right is a little scruffy. I've been told my writing's neat, except when i write too fast! :lol:

 

That is so hilarious, DJ...Turning the tables on a righty...So your Mom uses the mouse with her left hand? I'm a lefty and even I find it hard to use it with my left hand...I guess I was forced to use the mouse with my right hand since everyone else using the computer were righties.

I remember when my Mom was trying to teach me to crochet. She had a hard time teaching me and I couldn't copy what she was doing since I had to use my left hand. Until now, I don't know how to crochet. Oh well...

 

I just attended a jewelry-making class recently. Anyway, being a lefty, I had a hard time learning some of the techniques. The teacher was right-handed. I had a difficulty following what he was doing since our orientation of how to do things were different with me being left-handed and him a righty. Everything he did I had to do in reverse. The jewelry I made were kind of crooked and imperfect, being a beginner as well a lefty contributed to it. Oh well…

 

*Pokes thread*

I again attended another session of jewelry-making. As a lefty, I pretty much had to improvise technique-wise...Made my life a little bit more difficult but once I got the hang of it, it gave me a sense of satisfaction. Although, I ended up with a migraine since stringing beads with their tiny holes make it a pain to the eyes.

 

I found this article over at Philly.com:

The mysteries of lefthandedness
In pursuing the left-right riddle, scientists are unlocking secrets of the brain, genetics and human diversity.
By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer


Plato and Aristotle puzzled over lefthanders, as did Charles Darwin. What determines "handedness"? Why are only 10 percent of us lefthanded, and why did the ratio seem to change over the last century? Are lefties somehow different - less healthy, more creative?

With brain scanning and the latest genetic technology, scientists are finally starting to crack the mysteries. Lefthanders really are special, and the ways they differ are yielding insight into human diversity - especially how one person's brain differs from another's.

Searches for a lefthanded gene, meanwhile, are untangling the roles of nature and nurture in shaping our behavior, and revealing ever more subtle ways that DNA can influence but not determine who we are.

"Its a quirky phenomenon of humans, and people ask why it's relevant," says research geneticist Clyde Francks of Oxford University. "But this is taking us into a fundamental feature of the human brain."

"Lefthandedness is connected to a lot of neurodevelopmental disorders," says Daniel Geschwind, a UCLA expert in what is known as neurobehavioral genetics. People with autism and schizophrenia are more likely to be lefthanded, he says. "But with that risk, there is also gain."

Look at MIT professors or musicians or architects, he suggests, and you'll see a slightly higher percentage of lefthanders than in the general population. Neuroscientists are beginning to figure out why.

The brains of lefthanded people develop more freely in utero, they say, allowing the organization to stray more from the standard design.

In most people, experts say, the left hemisphere of the brain specializes in tasks that are performed in sequence, such as reading and speaking; the right does more holistic processing, like that needed for visual perception. Most people have a dominant left hemisphere, and since each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body, most of the population is righthanded.

For years, many psychologists assumed that lefties' brains were reversed, with language capacity concentrated in the right side of the organ. Subsequent work shows that is sometimes the case - but not always.

A large body of research shows the majority of righthanders follow the typical pattern, using the left hemisphere for language. Lefthanders' brains appear less predictable: About half have language abilities concentrated in the left, 10 percent in the right, and 40 percent make use of various regions on both sides.

Many animals are right- or left-pawed, or -footed or -flippered. Mice, for example, will consistently use either the right or left paw to press a lever. Unlike humans, however, most species are divided 50-50.

"Years ago geneticists tried to breed left- and righthanded mice," says Chris Walsh, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The offspring were still evenly divided.

In humans, handedness runs in families, though not in an easily predictable way. Lefthanders are about twice as likely as righties to produce lefthanded children, but most of their offspring will still be righthanded.

In the 1980s, psychologist Marian Annett of the University of Leicester in the U.K. came up with a mechanism by which a single gene could produce such a pattern. Genes often come in two or more forms, called alleles, and she suggested that one form might predispose people to righthandedness while another, less-common, form leaves it up to chance.

Since we get two copies of each gene - one from each parent - Annett calculated that even two of the less-common form would give you no more than a 50-50 chance of coming out lefthanded.

A few years ago, UCLA's Geschwind scanned the brains of identical twins, hoping to understand the connection between handedness, heredity and brain structure. He found that pairs of righthanded twins tended to share a more asymmetrical brain structure than did lefthanded pairs or mixed sets.

The finding backed the idea that genes either drive the developing brain toward righthandedness or leave it to chance.

No single righthandedness gene has turned up despite many efforts to find it. Three months ago, however, a team led by Oxford's Francks discovered one that may at least play a role. They found that lefthanders tend to share a variant of the gene they named LRRTM1, but it appears to influence handedness only if it is inherited from the father. (Genes whose dominance is contingent upon which parent contributes them make up about 1 percent of the total in humans.)

In either form, this gene is active in the developing brain. "It influences the way different regions wire up and find connections," Francks says. Its effect on determining handedness is small, and the geneticist believes several yet-to-be discovered genes are also involved.

Environmental factors - stigma, social pressure, possibly hormones - could nudge people one way or the other as well.

Other scientists are examining how LRRTM1 and other genes might tie lefthandedness loosely with all sorts of characteristics. Various studies have found weak but statistically significant associations between lefthandedness and schizophrenia, autism and even homosexuality.

Psychologist Ronald Yeo of the University of New Mexico thinks the common link is a kind of flexibility known as developmental instability. Roughly, this describes the tendency to get off track during development, he says, freeing some brains to vary from the majority design, with each component in its place.

That may allow for novel ways of arranging the brain. Perhaps only an unusual configuration can produce an artistic and scientific genius like Leonardo da Vinci, who was reportedly both lefthanded and gay.

Lefthandedness studies, Yeo says, "have proven to be an avenue into understanding more general issues in how human beings develop and where variation comes from." In doing that, they sometimes overturn long-held beliefs.

Yeo reanalyzed a study that relied on death records to show that lefthanders died an average of seven years younger than righthanders but found that its conclusions were based on the incorrect assumption that the percentage of lefthanders has remained steady over time.

A few scientists say their colleagues are looking at the mystery of handedness from the wrong perspective.

University of Toledo psychologist Stephen Christman was trying to connect handedness with preference for types of musical instruments when he made an unexpected finding: people who were very strongly right- or lefthanded preferred keyboards and drums, while those who were more ambidextrous gravitated toward strings.

"I realized that maybe what's important is not left or right but strongly one-handed or mixed," he says.

There is some evidence, he says, that mixed-handers have a wider connecting pathway - called the corpus callosum - between the right and left hemispheres. Having a wider connection seems to make it harder to do more than one thing at a time - playing a different rhythm with each hand, for example.

Christman has found that strong right- or lefthanders, on the other hand, are more likely to hold to set beliefs, such as creationism. He speculates that communication between hemispheres helps people revise beliefs.

None of this suggests mixed-, right- or lefthanders have a corner on creativity or genius. Researching an essay on the lefty guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who famously played a righthanded guitar upside down, Christman made a shocking discovery: the much-photographed Hendrix held a pen with his right hand.

It makes sense, says Christman, himself a lefthanded guitarist, if you consider that in "righthanded" guitars, the left-hand job of working the frets has grown increasingly difficult as both styles and design have evolved.

So why not see how it works the other way around?

The article is available at http://www.philly.com/philly/health_and_science/20071029_The_lefty_mysteries.html

 

A lot of my friends are left handed, it is cool watching them write because it looks backwards.

 

I am a mixed handed! I'm a rare kinda creature but the part of doing more than one thing at a time is true unless it has to do with coordination of my hands or arms of legs Interesting article btw!

 

I am still trying to learn how to write with my left hand.

 

That is weird with me. Ihad a surgery on my right hand a few years back and I needed to write with my left hand and it didn;t caused much trouble I just wrote with it. It is slightly sloppier but very readable. And when I tried to keep track of my movements I figured out that I am doing a lot of things left handed.

 

I practice a couple times a day, but it is still sloppy. I doin't really know which way to hold the pencil with my left hand either. Maybe that is the problem.

 

Once before, I sprained my left thumb and couldn't write with my left hand and so I tried writing with my right hand...Boy, was it difficult. I have practiced writing with my right hand but I've got to say that my right-hand writing looks like I was back in kindergarten...Looks atrocious! :lol:

 

*Pokes thread*

Hello fellow lefties! Happy Thanksgiving! Anyway, I found this commentary on being a lefty and I've got to say I can definitely relate to it.

So here it is:

Commentary: Little room for left handers in this right-handed society
By: Ashley Marshall

Southpaw, ballock-handed, corrie-pawed and cuddy-wifter are some of the random, off-the-wall nicknames for lefties around the world.

These nicknames, along with various books, lefty celebrity trivia, Web sites and stores dedicated to those with dominant left hands can make lefties feel proud of being different.

Although I love knowing I have something in common with Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates, I can't help but wonder if it's just a ploy to detract from the harsh realities of the left-hand world.

According to an ABC News report, left-handers are more likely to be schizophrenic, alcoholic, delinquent, dyslexic and more likely to have Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and mental disabilities.

We are also likely to die sooner than right-handed people, mostly as a result of left-handed related accidents, which occur because lefties live in a right-handed world.

As if living in a backward world with an ink-smudged hand and one dusty desk that looks like it's from the '80s isn't bad enough, now writing with our left hand is down right dangerous.

Only 10 percent of the population is left-handed, according to National Geographic, but why are people born with the lefty gene if it's physically harder to survive?

According to National Geographic, the left-handed gene, LRRTM1, which is also associated with mental illnesses, comes from the father and has been found to contribute to left-handedness by reversing the brain's symmetry.

In other words, the brain operation of right-handers, in which the right side of their brain controls emotion and the left side controls speech and language, is reversed in lefties.

I can remember being praised for my creative left-handed abilities from childhood. People gave me lefty calendars, books and tools during holidays, and I was taught to embrace my left-handedness.

But I had my share of difficulties.

I still have nightmares about searching for the one pair of left-handed scissors in elementary school. After everyone grabbed theirs, I was left fishing at the bottom of the box for the only lefty pair, which was rusty and hardly usable.

So, like many other times in my life, I learned to adjust to the right-handed way of life and cut uncomfortably with their scissors.

Now in college, those who have known me for years suddenly come to the revelation that I am left-handed when they see me sign a credit card receipt.

They tell me I am left-handed. And when I reply, "So?" they look at me as if they never really knew me, like they just found out a deep, dark secret about me that if they had known about before, they might not have befriended me.

This isn't unusual considering the negative connotations associated with being left-handed. It was once thought that the left side was the side of the devil. Left-handed children, including my grandmother, were punished in school for writing with their left hands and forced to be right-handed.

This still rings true, whether it has to do with the devil or the world's failure to understand left-handedness in society.

Sophomore Derek Demo can relate.

As a child, Demo naturally wrote with his left hand but because being a lefty was unconventional, his mother tried to make him right handed.

"She thought that because the world doesn't accommodate left-handed people that it would be hard," Demo said.

On the upside, because of his mother's right-hand training, Demo can hit and throw right handed but prefers to use his left hand to do the majority of his activities, he said.

But this lefty discrimination is deep-rooted. Consider the meanings of some words for left-handed people.

In Greek, the word "skaios," used for left-handed, means "ill-omened" or "awkward." In Gaelic, "ciotog," the word used for left-handed, means "strange one."

Despite the negative connotation with being left-handed and the fact that I might become schizophrenic, I still love being a lefty. It has its benefits - including its own holiday.

Left-handers are welcomed to celebrate Aug. 13 and encouraged to get our righty friends and family to spend a day in our shoes to show them how hard it is to live in a world made for the opposite hand.

And just when I thought I couldn't feel more special, I heard our song. That's right, we have an anthem: "Left-handers' Lament" by Ian Radburn. It's a little cheesy, but you right-handed people can't say you wouldn't be happy if someone wrote a song just for you.

That's what the left-handed phenomenon is all about, feeling like you belong and being part of a group. It's like a religion, race or ethnicity to associate with. You are a part of something not everyone else is.

So I will continue to embrace my left-handedness.

And who knows, the next time you see me around campus I might just be singing proud: "We're the cack-handed kings. We're the lefties. You right-handers just haven't got a clue 'cause if you'd been through what we've been through, then maybe you would feel superior, too."

The commentary is available at http://media.www.theorion.com/media/stor...y-3082662.shtml