Any lefties or ambidextrous out there?

Originally posted by marvinthemartian
reply to post by solve

 

As we are both lefties our house is set up for us

It's so funny watching right handed people trying to use our kitchen.

Hey, Marv, how about putting up a thread about this? I for one would be quite interested to see this. I am an ambi btw.

Left-handed although there are a few things I learned to do right-handed and so do them much better with the right.....

I iron, knit, and seem to lead activities with my right....perhaps to protect the left??
I think my right arm is stronger...so

I can only write left.....and some things are a toss up


Also, my paternal grandfather was the only lefty I knew in my family.

Ambi. Dad's left handed and I think these things are genetic. I think I was born left handed and trained to be right. The only thing I can't do with my left hand is write. Never taught it to. And it sure comes in handy. Yes, agree with the fighting part but I'm talking more along the lines of like working on a car. Stuff like that. A single handed person may have a problem getting pressure on a part. Me? No prob, just switch hands. Voila.

im amb i think it really helps in sports like basketball and pool but i was forced to right with my right hand by my teachers for some reason so writing with my left hand feels ackward but i have messy handwriting anyway so you really cant tell the difference so is it possible i was actually born left handed and forced to think i was a righty because alot of things feel more natural with my left then my right

Being left handed runs in my family. It is actually rare to have a right handed person in my family. One of my three children is right handed.

Lefty here too..
My teenage brat daughter is also left handed. She used to try and hide it, for whatever reason.

reply to post by aboutface

T be honest i don't think it would go any where

And you really have to see the confusion on their face to get it

Also it's just taken me more than five mins to write this so i don't think i could keep up with any replies.

Ambi here.
And I didn't know that until I took an archery course, 20 yrs ago, the instructor went down the line and did something with 'watch my finger' and you had to look at the finger coming closer I think.
He said I had no dominant eye, so I could choose left or right bow-I choose right of course as it's cheaper in the long run.
In fact does anyone know what he could have done, as I would like to test my teenagers, as I think at least one is ambi.

I played a Nintendo DS game that showed you, if you were better at left or right coordination-Turns out I was much better at fine work with my left but for brunt force my right is best.

I am a much better at drawing with my left, which is weird. I write with my right but can with my left, if I need to.

I also had tons of problem throwing a ball up against a wall, my hands never knew which one was going to catch it. Result= I missed more than caught. :-(

Pattern recognition is briliant and IQ is 156. Mildly dyslexic but a hidden one, as in time is indecipherable but I am a very good speller as I use whole word memory. Do not get phonetics.
Eidectic memory and colour memory (great for matching clothes in the sale).

Originally posted by muzzleflash
reply to post by WhiteAlice

 

What I mean is that we are all homo sapiens, we are wired the same in the sense that by utilizing a function and building pathways to enhance that function we can increase our ability in it.

Practicing a specific act equates to creating more neurological pathways for that activity. Reinforcement. It increases over time into honed skills and we can even improve on it and teach others what we learned so they can improve.

I can absolutely agree with this. I had a minor stroke decades ago that impacted my speech and short term memory due to minor areas of brain damage. Today, you can barely tell that anything occurred with my brain and the precise reason why is because I was capable of creating/building new pathways for those impacted functions. Stroke victims do this with varying degrees of success on a fairly consistent basis. The brain is immensely flexible in that sense.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
It works the same for everyone. Unless of course they are born deformed or are injured obviously, as that is a physical issue that can prevent natural neurological development.

Or with natural enhancements. There is always two sides of every coin. Some are born with those physiological differences that equate to enhanced or altered brain function. Kind of like Einstein's brain.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
And when you go back to the 19th century talking about "physiological or biological differences being studied", you need to be careful because that is deeply connected to the fallacious body of study we call eugenics. And the misconceptions held within those groups led to some awfully tragic consequences.

Aye, Sir Francis Galton and even Terman really. I have read some of those papers and found them to be positively disturbing. Great way for a human being to feel like a poodle. However, beyond eugenics, what has been noted over and over again has been functional and physiological brain differences amongst humanity as a whole. Neither of the papers that I put up were from the 19th century--both were published within the last 14-15 years. Discarding those papers as being 19th century and eugenics based is just a little fallacious. There are tons of papers by researchers around the world that examine these differences that have nothing to do with eugenics (or one should hope they don't--they often DO associate themselves with the goal of potentially genetically engineering giftedness and genius which is technically just a medically advanced form of eugenics). Just as one can be born at one end of a spectrum (ie Downs or Trisomy 18) to be negatively impacted, another can be born at the other end of the spectrum (increased folding, increased differentiation within the cortices) to produce genius. These type of studies are done on children who were usually identified at an early age. Ergo, the advantage was born with and not necessarily solely rooted in neurological development post-birth.

While I agree that developing a more diffuse usage of the brain is possible, whether or not it will necessary equate to someone of average intellect becoming gifted is unlikely. If there was solid and repeated evidence that it worked, you would see (barring conspiracy theories of dumbing down Americans) these techniques being heavily used in schools across the US. They aren't being used. Instead, researchers are trying to narrow it down in the hopes of genetically engineering greater intellect. Bringing it back to lateralization of the brain, utilization of both sides is considered an intellectual advantage.

If I remember correctly, Phil Michelson also golfs better as a leftie, even though he is a natural rightie.

Anybody who's a fan of skateboarding and digs in the culture, will notice that Rodney Mullen for example, does every trick switch, or fakie, just as well as he does it riding normal. Mind boggling IMO. This thread reminds me of how poorly coordinated I really am with my left hand and that I should work it out to strengthen the neuroconnections in my brain. Right hand blown off during a SHTF scenario? Ambidextrousness will be the differences between life and death.

reply to post by solve
I am ambidextrous. My father, my oldest daughter and my grandchild are lefties, my husband and my youngest daughter are righties. I guess that means we're a mixed family.

Right Handed:

Writing, throwing, hand guns, and slapping boneheads...

Left Handed:

Rifle, billiards, archery, catching...to name a few

But I can't switch it up very well so amb is out I believe. I dunno what it is but it's just natural to me.

Peace

I'm a lefty. I really only write, bowl and use fork with my left everything else is right handed. I also can switch when fighting, drove my friends nuts when we would box at party's. And as mentioned above helps when working on cars when you gotta get into a tough spot

Cool thread. I think I am dominate lefty but can do the weirdest things righty:

Bat Left Handed
Golf Right Handed

Whaaaat?? I dont understand that but it works.

Write Left
Eat Left - ELBOWS OUT always have to sit at the end of the table
Throw Right
Can box both righty and southpaw
Shoot a basketball left handed but do hook shots and lay ups with right hand much better
Kick Left footed


anyway....

reply to post by solve


I'm ambidextrous with gross motor skills but right dominant for fine motor skills.

I'm a righty but a few years ago a motorcycle accident smashed my right arm and elbow. It's much better now but for months I was forced to use my left hand for everything. It was frustrating at first but I was surprised how quickly I got used to using my left.

Once my arm healed I reverted back and have lost my learned ambidexterity but It is within us to use either. On a downer my friend in school was beaten for using his left hand as it was 'ungodly'
Gotta love good old ignorant catholic sadism.

Apart from having to go to 'Ned Flanders' Leftorium' have any lefties out there gotten any hassle for your leftidness?

Is there a word for someone who....

Left-handed: writes, shoots pool, masturbates, fires a rifle or shotgun, brushes teeth, use fork or spoon, cuts food with knife when knife is necessary
Right handed: Throws football, baseball, rocks, etc, throws a punch, uses a mouse, arm wrestles, fires a pistol, holds food in place with fork while holding knife in left hand

Both: manually pleasure my lady, use scissors, combs hair...

There's more... And some things I CAN do both handed better than most, but are at least twice as easy when using a specific hand so for those activities I listed only under one hand. For some reason when I try to write with my right hand, I can write backwards, pretty good I bet that's how Leonardo wrote everything backwards. I don't buy the theory that he did this to try to hide things... Are you kidding me?? You mean to tell me, that if someone were confronted with backwards writing, that they would just be baffled? "I give up! It's indecipherable!" No... I can read backwards almost just as good as I can forwards. I can turn a book upside down and read it almost just as fast. You don't NEED a mirror to read Da Vincis writings... So how is writing backwards going to hide anything??

I think he just discovered one day that, when writing with his right hand, he could write backwards, and maybe his teacher thought it was cool, and had never seen anyone who could do it so easily, so he just kept doing it. Like a trademark. You know its by Leonardo because he's the only one who could do it so well and at length.

Another idea is that he wrote backwards but with his left hand, in order to avoid smearing the ink as his hand drags across the paper... A problem any left hander has noticed. I remember the first time I saw the pinky side of my hand covered in pencil graphite.

Anyway, is there a special word for people like me?

Well... Let me rephrase that... Because I know there are plenty of "special words" for "people like me" XD

What I mean is, is there a word for people who are not quite ambidextrous but not left or right handed either??

4/5 of my sons, are lefties and my grandfather was ambidextrous. But I'm right handed.

Just like Aleister , I was born lefty and "corrected" in school, by second grade I was writing completely with my right hand. I throw a ball or Frisbee equally horrible in either hand. Shoot right eye dominant. I married a left handed man. Our (now adult) children are all right handed for writing, but shoot, play ball, golf, and fish as lefties. I often wonder if they are like that because I spent more time with them doing reading and writing and dad spent more time with them doing outside stuff.

S