Strictly left-handed

Interesting responses I'm happy to be sinister, if that is Latin for left handed. Shall try my best to chew on the right side of my mouth. And force myself to carry parcels etc on the right.

I know with husband who is ruthlessly logical (and right handed) and me who comes at something from around the houses, we had to learn how to communicate with each other and our two very different approaches. We do tend to end up agreeing though. Just takes a while sometimes!

I'm not quite sure I have got this right, here goes, somebody will put me right I'm sure.

Isn't there a fact that left handed people think with the right hand side of the brain. Right handed people think with the left hand side of the brain.

The joke being. Only left handed people are right in the head.

I am left handed, too, but have never found it a problem. I use my knife and fork the conventional way, but left handed for just a spoon. In fact I have a theory about people who are left handed - I think we are more flexible as we have to cope with the world which is mostly right handed. Oh, and I knit the right handed way too - just the way my mother taught me. Learning to tie my shoe laces was never a problem.

I am very anti buying children special left handed tools as I feel that usually they can learn to use right handed things and then will never struggle as an adult.

My DGS (just turned two) is fairly ambidextrous at the moment - it'll be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Oh, and I do remember an old lady telling my mum when she learned that I was left handed - "she's quite normal, too, isn't she?"

When I was picking up part-time work in FE, I was asked to teach communication skills to a small group of warehouse trainees. There were only seven of them there that day but when I set them something to write, I was astonished to see that every one of them was left handed.

grumppa

I'm another partial ambidexter. Two right-handed daughters – one clumsily so, and one very dextrous – and one left-handed which meant I gave the one teacher who complained about her perfectly legible but somewhat non-standard script (at the age of eight!) a right royal ticking off! Grr. Sorted. <dusts off hands>

I'm left handed, as is DD2. DD1's husband is left handed as are his father, brother and sister. You have to feel sorry for his mother who must be very confused!!

DD2 and I both write with our left hands ( her writting is lovely, mine has deteriorated somewhat). We both use a knife and fork conventionally but when using just one piece of cutlery we switch to our left. Neither of us can use a spoon and fork together - its just too confusing.

What a sinister lot we have here!

My brother is left handed. He was born in 1937 and in those days they still tried to force kids at school to use their right hand. Mum went to the school and told them to back off - this must have saved him a lot of grief.

(Sinister is Latin for left, but I wonder why being left handed is regarded as, well, sinister?)

Merlot gran my grown up sons regularly point out that I couldn't teach them to tie shoelaces ! My mum ( she was left handed but grew up when you could be made to write with your right hand)taught me to knit right handed style before I started school ( yes we were taught to knit at school) to save me having problems . I never did master sewing with my right hand and still sew upside down and back to front although it seems fine to me. Regular remarks about the ugly backwards sloping handwriting detracted from any praise about the quality of my written work during school years. My partner is also left handed and we both do things differently clearly showing the confusion we have experienced growing up in a right handed world. We are apparently more likely have accidents and die earlier than right handers because of the difficulties of operating in a right handed world! Cheery statistic!
Dining is always fun in our house and guests surreptitiously switching around cutlery and glasses with both of us being convinced we have done it correctly!
However I could use either hand to play tennis favouring the left for backstroke. But can iron, slice bread and meat only with my left hand
Playing on the Wii can be hilarious as both partner and myself have certain games in which we use our right and left hands- so much swopping and dropping of the control ! None of my sons is left handed.

Grannyknot, your dentist could be right about your teeth. I am completely right handed. My teeth are more eroded on the right side than on the left. When my right hand was strapped up for six weeks following surgery, it was a real trial to try to do things like crosswords with my left hand and aiming a cursor with a mouse took a lot of practice and was never really successful. However, it was an excellent excuse not to do the ironing. My family's handedness is mixed: DS1 is ambidextrous; his elder daughter is left handed but almost ambidextrous; youngest GS is very left handed. I am sure my mum was really left handed but had been made to use her right hand as a child. Her really awful left-sloping handwriting was the clue.

I come from a predominantly LH family. 2 DD's are left handed - one ambidextrous and the other totally leftie. She is married to another leftie but both their children appear to be right handed. I had to a buy leftie scissors for her but she managed to acquire beautiful handwriting without having to resort to writing from above which so many have to do. DD1 plays better tennis with her right hand but does most other things with the left. My long deceased Aunt was LH and became a headmistress. She was adamant that lefties should be allowed to be lefties and not 'taught' to write with their right hands as she had been many years before which she reckoned totally screwed her mind up! ( I don't think she quite put it in such terms )

I write right-handed, but blow my nose, clean my teeth, throw and kick left-handed/footed. Right-handed at hockey, batted right-handed at cricket and bowled left-handed (useless at both), shot right-handed. Loose change in my left pocket, but banknotes in my right hip pocket (gransnet pickpockets please ignore). Ambidextrous at hardly anything.

A French academic ascribed my then tendency to stammer to this confusion when I was in my late teens. Ceasing to stammer was not accompanied by any rationalisation of my left/right tendencies.

Politics equally confused!

Like Galen, I'm almost ambidextrous. I write with my left hand but use scissors in my right. I eat with a knife in my right hand but hold a spoon in my left. I couldn't teach my children to tie their shoelaces - they are all right handed.

I'm sure I would be better at playing the piano if I were right handed.

I've noticed amongst the judges I sit with, a large number of them are south paws.
I'd love to do a survey in the law society as I'm sure more are letters than in the general population

I don't understand that!

Galen

I'm very left handed!

When I was having surgery that involved bone grafts, I was given the choice as to which hip bone the donor bone was taken from, I chose the right one.

I'm partially ambidextrous.
I can use a screwdriver with either hand. Batted left handed at cricket.use either foot on a spade .
My father was completely ambidextrous he would use whichever hand happened to be nearest thr pen to write with.
It was equally illegible with either.

Grannyknot, at least you know where you are. I am right handed, I had some tests for dysparaxia and the therapist confirmed I was right side dominant, yet I do all kinds of things with my left hand by preference. I am told by people watching me that if I do use my left hand I look incredibly clumsy, but cannot do the action as well with my right hand. Curiously my dentist asked me if I was left handed because of the way I clean my teeth, whichever side left handers clean best I also do, despite using my right hand. Life can get very confusing.