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Being left-handed for dummies

By: Ashley Elson <[email protected]>

I was three years old when my dad bought one of those automatic baseball contraptions. I’m sure you would remember them – you step down on a button and the thing would make this horrible noise and then all of a sudden, the ball would pop up and you swing at it.

My dad set the machine up in our backyard so that when he swung at it, the ball would go sailing harmlessly into the fence.

Perfect, save for one thing. He, as is everyone on both sides of my family in recent history, is right-handed.

And then there is me.

I take the plastic bat from his hands and step up to the machine. My dad places my hands right on top of the left and places the bat over my right shoulder, quickly teaching me how to swing. Then he steps back. I press the button down and place the bat over my left shoulder, my hands still right on top of the left.

How I managed to swing, let alone hit the ball still remains a mystery. All I remember from that day is the crack of plastic against plastic and the consequent shattering of glass. I hit the ball right through the middle of our bay window.

I never experienced many difficulties growing up left-handed in a right-handed world. I learned by copying what everyone else did, just using the opposite hands. How to hold a fork, how to throw a football – it’s all done the same way.

The only “problem” was my penmanship, which bordered on illegible, until I finally had a left-handed teacher in the fourth grade. Of course, by then the damage had already been done in print and cursive, so my writing still remains difficult for many to decipher.

As for baseball, I corrected my swing that day. I learned to kick a soccer ball, throw a football and shoot a basketball just like everyone else. I would just reverse hands for whatever the teacher said to do. I got by just fine.

It wasn’t until eighth grade, when I had a left-handed P.E. teacher, that I learned my form was always a bit tweaked. My right-handed teachers either didn’t notice or just didn’t know what to do to help me.

People are surprised that I am left-handed, but I don’t see anything special about it. Left-handed people get along in the world just fine. It’s not like there is a label making it blatantly obvious that one is left-handed or right-handed.

We might have a few oddities – the way we hold our pencils or something. I can cut paper just fine with so called right handed scissors. I can use a mouse on the right side of a computer better than I can one on the left.

It is not hard to adapt, you just have to try.

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