Lefty or Righty?

I�m a lefty.

The only time it�s been a nuisance is I had to write on a dry-erase board. That, and finding a pair a scissors that worked in grade school was next to impossible.

Originally posted by Jonna
It really depends on the task at hand

if I am righty or lefty. The funny thing is the first 30 seconds that I sit down to eat a proper meal. I am constanty switching my knive and fork from and to hand seeing which feels better.

[edit on 29-6-2004 by Jonna]

Oh my god, you too!

I do everything by feel i'd say. If something isn't form fitted for a right hander or lefthander I can usually use either way.

Now when it comes to sports there was a time as a child where I also would just use my feel instead of being handed a right hand glove and getting used to it. I was able to to do this cause my parents were aware of the fact that I was either ambidextirous (sp) or left handed.

My parents were aware of this cause at a younger age I was baby sat by my grandparents who were "old contry", straight off the boat from Italy. And like is mentioned before the left hand is Sinistra, or Sinister in the latin countrys/religions. They would see me useing my left hand to eat and would prompty slap that hand and "force" me to use my right hand(I put that in quotes cause I dont mean that I was beaten, but definatly disiplined). Well at this time I would come home as a child and my mother noticed that I tended to sleep walk at night when I was in the watch of my grandparents. They at that time relised what the problems were and allowed me to use my hands as I prefered and like that the sleep walking stopped.

To this day when I eat, I still dont have a dominate eating side. I always try to think what hand feels better again...but then I relise...there is no spoon. and just use what ever feels better that night.

My Handedness;

1. baseball/basketball = left throwing/shooting, right batting
2. hockey/golf = right handed, left handed goaltender glove
3. writing = left hand
4. eating = ??? (I switch in meal all the time)
5. shooting = left trigger finger
6. drinking hand = left (but thats from a drinking game rule that we play)
7. tools = left
8. fishing = reel-in with right hand
9. arm wrestleing = left strong
talking Seinfeld terms; when I make my move on a chick, I like to go to the right side.

I too am an extreme right hander. However, my left eye is very dominant, so when I picked up a rifle, I used it left handed because I can't wink my left eye. So, when I picked up a pool cue, feeling like it was a rifle, I naturally used it left handed.

Very cool thread, thanks to the author for bringing it up. On the note of sports, I don't know if anyone here is a hockey fan like myself. I think more than half shoot left handed, but are actually right handed. I think the reason for this is that when holding a hockey stick with your stronger hand on top. For the record, I use my hockey stick right handed.

Righty here - but one of my three children is a lefty and clearly was from birth. And it would appear to be genetic, coming from my mother's side of the family, three of the 9 children are lefties. That would be 1/3, just as 1/3 of my children are lefties. Hmmm.

I know that I got my preference to play hockey from playing baseball and swinging a bat (Muscle Memory) and I was taught to swing a bat from my father. He probley told me to "hold this hand here, and this hand here" and that was the way I learned to bat...originaly. At the age of about 13 I relised that I could hit both ways, and that each way that I batted posessed different charcteristics. Like when I bat left I cant hit anything high and away, I have a very typical lefthanded batting swing (the griffey type) But when swinging left I have alot more power. When I bat right I have alot more average with less power...

Which brings me to my point, I heard from a baseball person at a camp a while back that it is "physicaly" easier for the body to swing in the right hand position (the way the organs and other things are lined up) and that swinging in the lefthand position is a different type of "mechanic" as they call it in the baseball world. Which makes me think that it is "physicaly" easier for the body to swing in a right hand position than it is in the left hand position, pysicaly/mechanicly speaking...from here on in the preferance of the person would take presidence. All just a theory.

[edit on 6/29/04 by HumptyDumpty]

[edit on 6/29/04 by HumptyDumpty]

Ambidextrous here. Ive always been able to write with both hands. Its probably because I didnt know right from left in kindergarten so I just practiced with both hands. I didnt know right from left until like fourth grade lol.

Originally posted by HumptyDumpty
I tended to sleep walk at night when I was in the watch of my grandparents. They at that time relised what the problems were and allowed me to use my hands as I prefered and like that the sleep walking stopped.

funny you should mention that HD,
I use to sleep walk alot too when I was younger and a cousin of mine the same thing...all at that period where our parents we're trying to re-program our "devil's hand" syndrome

I wonder if there's a connection with sleep-walking and handedness?











[edit on 29-6-2004 by quadricle]

It's pretty well accepted now [thank goodness] that left-handed children should not be forced to be right-handed. This happened to me when I started school, & my subsequent nightmares & crying spells alerted my mother to a problem.

Cross-laterality's interesting too, but how this relates to various sporting activities is somewhat beyond this couch potato -

What is "Cross Laterality"?

This is a mixture of sidedness, such as left-handed but right-footed and right-eye, and can cause some co-ordination problems. Crossed hand/eye dominance can affect performance in some sports, particularly racquet sports where the field of vision might sometimes be restricted.

It can be advantageous in gymnastics, running and netball, because positioning of the body would be more evenly distributed for better balance.

That, and other pertinent facts, at
www.anything-left-handed.com...

I am also ambidextrous. I tend to eat, smoke, write, telephone, use tools with either hand, scissors tended to be a pain when I was a kid cause sometimes I had a hard time telling which was made for left or right. I was told at one point that being ambidextrous meant I was mentally ill. I say that is monumentally false, that I am sure there are plenty of people who are lefties or bothies that are quite healthy, and likely in many cases to possess unique gifts. I am curious, any thoughts?

I definitely am more strongly righthanded, but using my left hand for tasks as an alternate has never been a problem. Ever since I was a child, I remember choosing to practice all sorts of tasks with my left hand because I thought it was cool. I don't know if that means I'm ambidextrous, or just stubborn.

Footed-ness is another story...if I have any time at all to think about it, the right foot HAS to go first...escalators, stairs, etc.

One of my cats is a definite lefty. Causes some problems because his litter box is arranged for a righty.

heh, my friend did a speech on the for his 4n6 class. hes a lefty and like the only one i know besides my cousine

im a righty by the way.

I'm lefty!

but I use the mouse with right hand! damn you logitech for not creating MX series mice for lefties!


btw, forcing left handed children to write with rigth hand is very bad! I'm really sleepy now, but i'll say it shortly, it screwes up brain hemispeheres(sp?) the one resposible for the left hand starts working on the right! and the child becomes slower thinking! and have problems like for example reading from right to left sometimes!

I am a south paw over here!

I am also ambidextrous, I pretty muchly do everything with my right hand. I just eat and write with my left. When I was in school and had to go to the dry erase board I wrote with my right hand...which I didnt notice until the teacher said something about it. I am the only one in my family that is a Lefty and so my when my mom would go and buy school supplies for us in our first years of schooling she would come back with these damned lefty scissors..arg and I could never use them..lol But she never tried and "convert" my handedness thank god.


-Gala

LEFTY

I use my computer, right handed...

I bowl.. left...

I was all confused during baseball because.. I could both catch and throw better with my left so I never knew what to do.. :O I'm not sure which way I batted though.

I had a wierd lefty experiance... sitting in my house with a few friends.. there were either 4 or 5 of us.. when one suddenly piped up "Do you realize we are all left handed? You know how mathematicaly rare it is be that we are all in the same room!!"

Right.

But I can play badminton reasonably with left.
(table tennis is also good for practising using left hand)

I'm a righty through and through, but my husband and my eldest son are both ambidextrous.
My brother-in-law is left handed , and when he was young wasn't allowed to write left handedly. He got the old ruler across the knuckles treatment.
Now he is a really bad speller, but has a good party trick of being able to write the mirror image of a sentance really neatly with either hand.

I write with my left hand but I do almost everything else with my right hand. If I try and throw with my left hand, it seems totally unnatural.

I am right handed but I can do a lot of things left handed. I can write left handed some but it usually turns out backwards. I don't know why. I also masturbate left handed for odd reason. But I'm mostly right handed...

I am right handed, but I was born left-handed. My grandmother forced me to switch when I was very young. The interesting thing, (one of them) is that I have a difficult time distinguishing between left and right. One of my college professors had the same thing happen to him when he was a child and has the same problem with lefts and rights. I guess by changing us, we got it all mixed up. Another interesting thing that I noted was that I am able to use both hands equally well and that I am very talented in several of the areas on both sides of the brain function picture that was posted earlier. Although other areas, such as math and science, I am definitely lacking.

I would have to say the cause of which hand to do certain things is a result of both nature and nurture. I would also say the younger you learn to do things with either hand, the easier it is to adjust to. I don't know about in other aspects of life, but I have seen this a lot in sports. When I was young, I remember being able to switch hit and adjust very easily, depending on who was pitching to me (righty or lefty). Same in soccer, depending on which side of the field I was on. Now, after years of not doing either, I think my lefty abilities would have to be relearned, and it would probally take me much longer to adjust (I am a natural righty).

As for ballplayers who hit from one side and throw from the other, I know in Hideki Matsui's case (leftfielder for the NY Yankees) he throws righty and hits lefty. The reason for this is because when he was a child (between 8-10 I think) he would play baseball with his older brothers and their friends, and as it turns out, he would hit the ball better than everyone else. Well, the older kids would become jealous, and as a result, they would make him hit as a lefty to try to even out the playing field. He ended up hitting as a lefty the rest of his life. The strange thing is, you would think he would be able to hit as a righty as well since he is a natural righty, but this is not the case. Wierd, huh?

PEACE!!!