Being a Southpaw

I was in New York City. We had just finished dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. Su had lent me her husband’s camcorder. I had to use it ‘cos my camera batt ran out pretty fast and it was unexpected (hate it when this happens!) We were rushing to catch the subway home when the camcorder I was holding, slipped right out of my hand and crashed against the sidewalk. My heart stopped, cos it wasn’t mine. Just as we were going home I was thinking of the camcorder and how I simply hate using camcorders without even being aware of it. They have to be held by the right hand. If I did it using my left, I would be shooting my face instead of whatever that was worth shooting at that moment. From the moment I was starting to be aware of things, I had to learn to adapt living in a world made for right handed people. For starters, my dad used to smack the top of my left palm whenever we were eating rice using our hand and I used my left. Indians (as well as in some other Asian culture) have always believed left hand is the “unclean” one. It’s impolite to eat and accept things using the left hand. I have gotten comments like, “Oh! You’re left-handed, lefties aren’t very bright.” HUH? At Primary 3, when we were allowed to use pens to write in school books, I was dead excited, cos I thought writing with a pen signifies adulthood, but at the end of each school day, I’ve always had ink smears on my book and on a portion of my left palm. Teachers were not sympathetic, they said I was untidy. So i had to tilt my book (45 degrees to 90) so that there wouldn’t be any smearing, not only the book was tilted, my neck was too. Now we know why Leonardo Da Vinci (my fellow lefty) wrote from the right side of a sheet to the left and in mirror images. Brilliant. And then, golf. That was classic. While others faced right, I had to face the left. I wasn’t only facing right; I was facing the whole world, an entire stretch of amateur golf players. On the bright side, at least no one gets to see my butt. The list goes on. The computer mouse, ya-da ya-da (… the associated right brain hemisphere that is said to be more active in left-handed people has been found in some circumstances to be associated with genius and is correlated with artistic and visual skill.”) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handedYup, and what is consoling is that I am in the good company of some of the world’s greatest creative geniuses – Beethoven, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Charlie Chaplin and Paul McCartney. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have dropped the camcorder if I had held it using my trusty left-hand.