I'm left-handed. My grandmother wanted my parents to force me to be right-handed, but my parents thought that was silly. The only thing I do right-handed is use a fork/spoon. It seems natural for me, because then I can pick up a knife in my left hand and use my dominant hand to cut. I always looks silly to me when I see right-handed people switching their forks over to their other hand to cut food.
I'm the only lefty in my family and when I started drawing as a kid my mom would always put the pencil in my right hand to have me put it back in my left as soon as her back was turned. I don't really see any drawbacks, except for smudging ink and pencil, since most people think it's cool that I'm left handed. However it's only writing and eating that I do with my left hand, I throw and kick with the right side of my body which confuses that shit out of people.
This confuses me. I'm left handed, have put tens of thousands of rounds through AR's, and not once have I had a round go down my shirt. One will hit my right arm every once in a while, but that's as far back as they'll go. Everyone shoots differently, I guess. As far as reloading, I've always thought releasing the mag was easier left handed. Grab the mag with the right hand and hit the button with my thumb. Out it comes. The only things I do right handed are play guitar and beat off. I have a firm handshake for a reason.
I was born a natural righty but I guess you could say I'm a good example of nature vs. nurture. My parents were divorced when I was younger and when I was with my mom, I would do everything right-handed. However, when I was with my dad, I would do everything left-handed because he was a lefty. This included eating, writing, use tools, sports, etc.. I would subconsciously do this and I have no memory of it until 2nd and 3rd grade when I was forced to pick a hand and stick with it by my parents/school teachers. When I was writing in school I would start writing a sentence with my left hand and then halfway across the paper I would switch to my right hand and finish the line. Somewhat unfortunately for me I ended up picking my left hand. The end result is that I'm ambidextrous and can do pretty much anything with either hand. I haven't used my right hand for writing in years so I'm a bit out of practice but I used to be able to write my name with either hand and you couldn't tell the difference. I'm 22 now for a reference. Side notes: - If I could go back in time and convince my 8-10 year old self to pick my right hand I would do it - Writing on chalk boards/white boards is a pain because you can't drag your left palm. When you're a lefty you push across the page or surface to write instead of pulling - Screw cursive for the same reason.
I never thought of it as "dragging" but it fits. But how about just picking up your hand? Maybe all the years of art & architecture broke me of it. (I've hand drafted blueprints without physically touching the surface of the paper with any skin after it was attached to my drafting board.) More lefty stuff: I can only stroke the kitty left handed... the right just doesn't have the right motion. I shoot firearms right handed though (right eye dominant)
Surprise factor. If you spend most of your amateur career facing righties, lefties are always going to be a secondary thought. Off the top of my head, other factors include the fact that most MLB picthers are right-handed, and that in NFL for QBs, it could mess with usual blitz packages (as they usually prepare for right handed QBs). Way more lefties here than in the general population. Seems like lefties are exceptionally prone to destructive and inappropriate behavior. Learn something new every day.
There are probably just more lefties responding to this thread. I assume right-handed people are generally less interested in the topic.
I'm left handed. I drive a stick and smoke. Double bonus points for me. Weirdly enough, in athletics, I do everything rightsided. Kick, throw, bat, etc. Except for fighting. I'm extremely comfortable fighting either orthodox or southpaw. I definitely hit harder with my right though. Much more precision with my left. As far as writing goes, fuck that shit. I've got awful penmanship compounded with smearing graphite/ink. I learned how to type as quick as I could simply because I knew that anything I wrote by hand would be pretty much illegible. In the interest of honesty, I jerk off right handed and finish left handed. Blowing my wad right handed feels too weird. Then I feel the urge to finish again, this time with my left hand. I imagine if I broke my left hand, I'd probably end up a drooling vegetable.
I'm speechless that guys still are getting pressured for being left handed in the US. That's just plain retarded, sorry. It's a non-issue here in Germany. I've been driving stick for all my live, and actually feel slightly uncomfortable when I have to use my right hand for steering. I'm right handed btw.
It's an old-fashioned religious thing. No one today has an issue with it, but people raised thirty years ago in Catholic schools definitely did. The only people who will actually go "SPAWN OF SAYTAN" at you are old people, possibly the same old people yelling about black people. In twenty years, it won't matter at all.
Funny that I'd not thought about it, I'm a righty but till now I never realized the times I subconsciously use my left. For instance, if someone resists my advances for intercourse I find I my left hand is more predominant when it comes to the necessity to physically express my point of view. I guess it may be that I just get a little too animated when it comes to talking politics.
I'm right handed and left footed. I also play drums and playing drums splits up your limbs, ie, all keep different parts of the same count or play autonomously (polyrhythmic). For whatever reason, maybe a subtle curve of shaft, I jerk it with lefty.
I got really bored taking notes one day and decided to try writing DaVinci/mirror style. It turns out it took all of 5 minutes to teach myself, seriously fellow lefties, just pull instead of push. It even looks exactly like your normal handwriting. Another common complaint on here has been notebooks. I accommodated myself by writing back to front in the notebook, this way the spiral is on the right hand side and out of the way. Also like others, I hate the pencil and started using a pen pretty early on to avoid smearing. Fun fact: Ambi/Left handedness is linked to a higher incidence of mental illness including schizophrenia and autism. There are a lot of developmental differences between the brains of right handed people and left handed people. I tend to chalk up the presidential anomaly to a greater amount of development in the right hemisphere where some language functions important to public speaking are located. Here is a neat video that illustrates just how lateralized the brain is.
I get my left handedness from my mom's side of that family. Apparently I started coloring with my left hand when I was two. Now it's no big deal. The only real problem I ever had was in (a catholic) grammar school where I would always get marked off for sloppy handwriting. Between the smudges and constantly tilting my fucking wrist to prevent them, my handwriting would be shit. And it still is, but I've improved a lot since. Yet I type everything when I get the chance. In baseball I bat left. When riding a skateboard I put my left foot first, I use left handed scissors, I jack off with my left, use a mouse with right, sit at the end of tables in restaurants and have pretty much adapted. I really hope you're kidding. If you seriously think that then you're just a whiny bitch. I can think of tons of groups worse off. If you honestly think being left handed is anything more than a minor inconvenience every once in a while then you have serious insecurity problems. I never bought into the left handed being more/less intelligent or creative or whatever the myth is. I don't even know, because it's all bullshit anyways.
"I've had this debate before, left handed people are the most shit on group of people currently in the world." --Mexicutioner. So you're telling me a southpaw has got no chance? What about that hidden left hand? You know what I'm talking about.
As covered before Fuck scissors, fuck spiral notebooks, fuck all the righty desks in lecture halls. When I started little league baseball in 1st grade I learned to bat before my coach realized (from my glove) that I was a lefty. Which led to me feeling more comfortable batting righty but being able to hit harder lefty. Since the league was a bastard child of baseball and t-ball (4 balls and the bring out a tee, instead of a walk) I faced pitchers righty and tried to work the count to where they'd bring out the tee and I'd switch to lefty (which all the parents watching thought was hilarious. In junior high basketball being a lefty gave me my only scoring move. I was a point guard, so would bring the ball up slowly, righty, the defender would shade right and when I got to the 3 point line I'd switch to lefty and drive hard left for a lefty layup.
I'll just echo some things I've seen already. The lead/ink on the hand pisses me off. Spiral notebooks have caused me to write in a manner that doesn't look physically possible. But I'm more of a sporadic lefty. Shoot basketball right handed. Throw a baseball left handed. Throw a football right handed. Drum right handed. Bat and golf left handed. Write left handed. Play racket sports right handed. But I eat and jerk off left handed. Those 2 things get me through the day so I'll consider myself a true lefty. I never really had my parents try to beat it out of me, but every once in a while when I would get in trouble, mom would make me eat my supper right handed just to piss me off. And I'm pretty sure she got some sick enjoyment out of watching me attempt that feat. Oh yeah, speaking of eating, restaurant seating gets exponentially more complicated as the number of lefties increases. When I shot my first deer my dad tried to teach me how to gut it (we do this in the field). He is not a very patient man and after about 90 seconds of watching me bumble around doing everything backwards he threw his hands up and yelled "YOU FUCKING LEFT HANDED FREAK! FIGURE IT OUT ON YOUR OWN." Our hunting crew still calls me a fucking left handed freak every year.
Right handed. Wouldn't have it any other way. There's a reason you call someone your right hand man if he has your back or that you have two left feet if you can't dance.
Interesting choice of words considering the Latin word for left (of, at, or toward the left) is Sinistro which is where the modern word Sinister derived from.
I am 100% certain that the mouse is why I jerk it lefty even though I am right-handed in every other aspect.