It's a Clumsy World for Lefty
September 1961 Popular Science

February 1949 Popular Science [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Science, published 1872-2021. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Pardon my self-indulgence here, but in this world where every idiosyncrasy of every person and/or special interest group and/or identity group must be accommodated - yea, even celebrated and accorded special privileges - why is it that we left-handers, south-paws, leftys, gawk-handers - call us what you may - to this day are forced to adopt the practices and implements of right-handers? If a left-handed version of a keyboard (number keys on left), a pair of scissors, notebooks with hinging on the right, mugs with handle to the right of design, tape measures that extend to the left with numbers right-side up, etc., it usually costs more. Speaking of reparations (were we?), while many of the aforementioned entities are claiming a right to reparations for past injustices regardless of whether the claimant ever personally suffered from it, why shouldn't leftys, who historically have been forced to adopt and adapt to the righty's world, and even punished for resistance or inability, also now be financially compensated for the indignances? A few years ago I would have asked for a cool million dollars, but with the hyperinflation of late, I need $1.19M today. In cash, and tax-free.

It's a Clumsy World for Lefty

But getting better. Now he can get left-handed rifles, saxophones, penknives - even checkbooks

About 10 percent of all newspaper readers who saw a recent photo of Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth shooting pool got a special kick out of it.

Why? Because, with the confident stance of an old pro, the royal lady was wielding the cue with her left hand. She has the same problem they have.

She and 300,000,000 other people live a more or less frustrated existence in a right-handed world. They deal as best they can with doorknobs, zippers, buttons, gearshifts, tools, scissors, musical instruments, telephone dials, corkscrews, can openers, and a whole catalogue of other objects not designed for their convenience.

But Lefty leads a far happier life than he used to. There was a time when parents shouted: "You'll learn to use your right hand or else!" As a result, a few high-strung kids were left stuttering in protest, and clumsy with both hands.

Today, warned by psychologists, parents are inclined to let a left-handed youngster be himself. The theory now is: If you're a lefty, be a good one.

Nobody Cared. There was only a feeble effort to take pity on the left-hander a century ago. It produced a spate of left-handed shaving mugs with a side mirror to the right of the handle. There was a somewhat larger production of left-handed mustache cups.

Nowadays, manufacturers cater to the 18,000,000 left-handed Americans by making scissors, shears, baseball gloves, sickles, refrigerators, pocketknives, golf clubs, dental equipment, fishing reels, bowling balls, one-armed writing chairs, rifles, and saxophones for them alone.

As long ago as 1945, the Trade Bank & Trust Co., New York City, started providing left-handed checkbooks - stubs printed at the right of the check. Since any well-trained checkbook user fills out the stub first, a left-handed client thus will avoid the risk of smudging the ink with his knuckles when he starts writing the check.

Now the Bolt's on the Left - Where Southpaws Want It

Despite the fact that millions of hunters are left-handed, not until two years ago was there a rifle or shotgun designed especially for them.

Early gunsmiths coped half-heartedly with the problem by providing duplicate cheek pieces on both sides of their stocks - the rest was up to the user. Since then, lefties have put up with rifles they had to turn upside down to load, shotguns with precisely built-in castoff slant precisely on the wrong side, and ejection mechanisms designed to spew a stream of used shells right across their startled eyeballs.

When World War I introduced the bolt-action rifle on a really big scale, southpaw shooters had had it. Slide- and lever-action guns were barely manageable; bolts were impossible. The Army had one answer: force all recruits to shoot right-handed - usually with less than spectacular success. Sportsmen either paid for expensive alterations on their shooting pieces or simply didn't buy bolt actions at all.

But recently, one noted firearm maker - Savage Arms - took pity on the suffering southpaws. First came a left-handed version of its famous Model 110 bolt-action rifle, made in several calibers for about $125. For the first time now, a lefty could rapid-fire a bolt action without stopping after each shot to switch hands and throw the bolt with his right. Sales zoomed.

Savage soon added a 12-gauge shotgun in which the shells were ejected to the left, instead of to the right across the user's line of vision. Known as the Model 30L and ACL, it sells in standard and deluxe versions for about $85 to $90. Except for their left-handed orientation, shotgun and rifle have the same working parts as their right-handed cousins.

While telephones and doorknobs are still for righties, southpaws are at last getting a break where accuracy and safety are an absolute must. - Ken Warner.

Taking pen in hand. The big trouble with writing left-handed is that the penman drags his hand over what he has just written. It's also harder work, for he pushes the pen, whereas the right-hander pulls his along. Furthermore, the lefty can't see what he has written last, for his scribbling hand is in the way - unless he has been taught to grasp the pen higher up than the right-hander does.

An important aid to the left-hander is to arrange the paper with the top left corner uppermost - just the opposite of what suits right-handers. This gives relief from the cramped writing position so often the mark of the lefty.

One way to lead the lefty's customarily cramped writing hand to greater legibility is to guide it in scribbling from left to right (which doesn't come naturally to it), and in making big, flowing, clockwise loops across the page.

It's possible to turn the ostensible handicap of left-handedness into a very tidy asset. Edward R. Murrow, for instance, has been called "the best left-handed putter in Christendom." And no baseball fan is likely to forget the shining examples of Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Stan Musial, Johnny Padres, and Warren Spahn.

And while we're still on the diamond, consider the pitcher-spooking versatility of Mickey Mantle. In a game against the Detroit Tigers last May, he hit a left-handed homer in the eighth inning and a right-handed homer in the tenth.

Is it inherited? Scientists haven't yet decided whether left-handedness is the result of heredity or environment. Most think it comes from a blend of the two.

There is evidence that when both parents are left-handed, half their children will be. If only one parent is a lefty, one child in six is likely to be in the same boat. If neither parent is left-handed, there is still a one out of 16 chance of it showing up in a child.

However, a baffling fact weakens the heredity theory: 20 percent of all identical twins are opposite-handed, one preferring the right, the other the left. Since identical twins result from the split of a single embryo, they have identical genes. Therefore, a difference in handedness between them cannot be hereditary.

Another mystery is why twice as many boys as girls are left-handed.

Doctors have long known that people often prefer the use of one eye, or foot, or even one side of the jaw to the other. The command comes from the side of the brain opposite to that of the body member. For instance, the right side of the brain controls the left hand. Also, the center of speech and expression is on the same side of the brain as the center of motion, and close to it. This has led to the theory that when a child is forced to change handedness, the resulting confusion spreads to his speech center and garbles his tongue.

There is no proof, however, that forcing a nervous youngster to change hands is more likely to make him stutter than obliging him to give up teasing the cat. The point, say psychologists, is that no emotionally unstable individual should be forced to do anything. Encouraged, yes, but not shamed or whipped into it.

Can you prevent it? One confusing fact is that young babies use either hand equally well. They simply reach with the hand that's closest. The best way to encourage them in the direction of a more agreeable later life is to put everything they're expected to touch within easier reach of the right hand.

Between the ages of six months and a year, a child's natural preference begins to assert itself. Most children decide the matter once and for all between the ages of three and seven.

If someone's kid is sprouting fast and still hasn't made up his mind which hand he prefers, it's advisable to take him to a clinical psychologist. Tests will help determine the degree of left-handedness.

If the youngster's preference is simply not very strong, it should be easy to encourage him to switch hands. If nature really intended him to be a lefty - well, let him learn to be a ballplayer.

There are shreds of comfort. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found that left-handed students are notably quicker with the left than right-handers with the right. Other researchers report that the majority of cats are left-pawed, and that parrots are predominantly left-clawed. In between are rats, rhesus monkeys, and chimpanzees, which seem to be able to do equally well with either front foot or paw.

The sinister left. There's no telling when things to the left first got a bad name, but it was in the dim reaches of history. The Greeks thought it most unlucky to hear thunder on the left. Before Columbus sailed, Guatemalans were paying serious attention to the antics of a soothsayer's left leg. The seer would rub both his legs vigorously to prophesy. If the right leg muscles twitched, the future looked rosy; if the left leg muscles quivered, watch out!

Even today, primitive African tribes insist that their women prepare food with the right hand. The practice of wearing a wedding ring on the left hand reputedly began as an effort to ward off evil spirits. Even language contains built-in sneers at left-handers. The Latin word for "left" has become our ominous "sinister"; the French word for "left" is now our snooty "gauche."

Social scientists generally believe that because about 90 percent of all people are natural right-handers, the majority early made a virtue of it and decided there was something queer about anybody who was different.

Fancy company. Civilized opinion began shifting slightly in favor of the ill-used left-handers when Alexander the Great came along. Being a lefty seemed to be no handicap at all to him in conquering the world. Then Charlemagne, another ruler who cut a wide swath, found it handier to grip a mace or a sword with his left than his right. This gave left-handedness a substantial boost toward respectability.

Since Charlemagne's time, quite an array of notables have been left-handers. Four great artists are among them: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Picasso. Da Vinci, with his usual flair for outdoing everybody else at anything, could write, draw, or paint equally well with either hand.

President Truman always threw out the first baseball of the season with his left hand, but he writes with his right. President Garfield, on the other hand, was a lefty all the way.

In addition to a large and immensely valuable collection of ballplayers who are left-handed, the fraternity includes Betty Grable, Danny Kaye, the cartoonist Milton Caniff, and, now that her secret is out, that elegant snooker player, George VI's widow. - Wesley S. Griswold.

Posted April 18, 2024