The reality of being left-handed in a right-handed world

Well it isn’t giant intellect, guitar skills, political leadership, artistic genius, football prowess or Oscar-winning acting. What we all have in common is being left-handed.

There are many famous left-handers - from Napoleon Bonaparte to Tom Cruise. Even our future king, Prince William, is a leftie.

This week was International Left-Handers Day. Events to mark this celebration of sinistrality included left vs right-handed sports matches and a left-handed tea party. The Left Handers Club (yes, there is such a thing) says this annual day highlights issues facing left-handers, particularly schoolchildren, and has “contributed more than anything else to the general awareness of the difficulties and frustrations left-handers experience in everyday life”.

This might seem a bit niche - after all, only 10 per cent of the world’s population is left-handed - but us lefties know how weird it feels to try and fit into a right-handed world. Everyday items are unnatural to us. I recently picked up a spaghetti server which was curved to the left; I couldn’t use it without positioning myself at an awkward angle. It felt wrong. I’ve always had a problem with scissors and vegetable peelers. Tin-openers, measuring jugs, corkscrews, tape measures and those pens on chains in banks are all designed for right-handed folk.

When I learned to write, I started at the right-hand side of the page and wrote across to the left. It was perfectly natural to me, but was “corrected” at school. I went through school life smudging ink across the pages of exercise books and the side of my left hand. School desks with chairs attached certainly weren’t designed for left-handers either.

At least I didn’t have my left hand tied up, like some poor lefties did. This barbaric practice happened to someone I know. Forcing him to write with his right hand didn’t “cure” him - it gave him a childhood stammer.

Today there’s a range of left-handed products, including bread knives, rulers, fountain pens and playing cards. But there’s still a stigma. “We thought there was something wrong with her,” confessed my friend, whose daughter is left-handed.

Left-handed tin-openers from anythinglefthanded.co.uk (Image: anythinglefthanded.co.uk)

Left-handed myths go back centuries, many associated with evil. The Devil is usually portrayed as left-handed and is said to watch us over the left shoulder - the one we throw spilt salt at. Witches were said to greet Satan with the left hand and Joan of Arc was depicted as left-handed, to make her seem evil. Getting out of bed left foot first, the ‘wrong side’, signifies bad temper. Wedding rings are worn on the left hand to fend off evil.

If your left foot itches at the start of a journey, it will end badly. It’s bad luck to pass a drink with your left hand. In the 18th and 19th centuries, left-handedness was ‘beaten out of’ people.

Even today, left-handed schoolchildren are missing out. Education campaigners say there is no record of their progress in schools and nothing to meet their needs. Yet adjustments can be as simple as changing how they hold a pen.

Anything Left-Handed (anythinglefthanded.co.uk), which provides products for those born left-handed or using their left hand due to accident, illness or disability, says schools lack resources and training to help left-handed pupils. This month the company is giving its Schools Fund a boost. Says owner Ian Lowden: “Left-handers Day celebrates the creativity and resilience of left-handers. It also focuses on raising awareness of tailored educational tools for left-handed students”... “to ensure they receive the support they need to thrive at school.”

While left-handers are said to be clumsy, prone to psychotic disorders and six times more likely to die in an accident, it seems that having a more developed right side of the brain also makes us more creative, artistic, musical, athletic and better multi-taskers. I’ll take that. I may be a child of the Devil, and hopeless with a potato peeler, but I’m happy to be a leftie.