 | Both of my parents were left handed. My only sister is right handed (no brothers).
Until very recently I wrote with my right hand and did everything else with both. Ball sports, darts and the like would go naturally into my left, but I found that my right was just as good.
I used to have a dart board in my room and spent a lot of time playing alone left hand against right - each would win about 50% of the time. I drew a crowd of spectators in a college common room once when I tried my hand at a two player computer game on my own, left against right, and got a good score!
I was told that when I was 4 or 5 years old and just being introduced to writing I picked up the pen in my left hand. The teacher suggested I try my right, then choose which I wanted to use. I couldn't decide - they felt the same to me, so she suggested I use my right (I can see the logic in that now). As a result I've hardly ever written with my left hand, and as the years have gone by, maybe because of thinking of myself as a right hander, I've tended toward doing more and more with my right, particularly one handed complex hand manouvres.
Something happened to me recently on a 1 week course which led to a group of us discussing the possibility that I was basically ambidextrous. Since then, 2 weeks ago, I've been experimenting with the use of my left hand, and I've been MINDBLOWN that this left hand that for most of my life I've believed incapable of such things as writing, drawing, even properly using a computer mouse is every bit as capable as my right.
Writing is taking a bit longer to pick up with my left but considering that through my life my right hand has had about 35000 hours of writing experience and my left, prior to the last couple of weeks, probably has had less than 10, that is not suprising.
I wonder how much of a lot of people's handedness, especially in adulthood, is more the result of hours of practice than the raw ability of the hand (I know that there's more to it than that, but it's a factor which isn't often acknowledged).
I'm getting a strange buzz out of writing with my left hand and watching it do something pretty well that I spent my whole life believing it couldn't. It's almost eerie.
I work with computers and so use the mouse for most of the day. Recently I tried swapping to left hand. It took a 2 or 3 days for my left hand to get the hang of it properly so for a while I swapped around according to the complexity of the task. Now I prefer it; in fact I love it! (I don't change the button functions.)
Drawing fell into place almost immediately (though I'm not a good artist with either hand!).
I don't know where this strange little hobby of mine will take me. My friends think I'm eccentric.
Starburst
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