For southpaws it’s just one thing after another

Press, 8 February 1985, Page 16

For southpaws it’s just one thing after another

By

YVONNE EVANS

The southpaw skating bears of the Great Moscow Circus on Ice are lucky indeed that their only problem was a shortage of spare sinistral ice-hockey sticks. For the left-handed person is handicapped not just in sport but in many other areas as well. Throughout his day, the southpaw encounters one thing after another that is dextrally designed to make life difficult.

In his first few waking moments he fumbles to switch off the alarmclock which, like his watch (if it is not digital) has the most-used button inconveniently placed on the right. (If you have ever seen a lefthander’s contortions over winding up, or setting, a non-battery-powered watch, then you will understand the problems this creates.)

At last, when the prolonged ringing of the alarm has woken him to face yet another dreary dextral day, he goes to visit the smallest room of the house, finding again that even men’s underwear is made for the convenience of the right-handed majority of males. The cistern-handle, too, is rightways inclined. Next, off to the kitchen: what a disaster-area there for the southpaw. All manner of cutlery, cooking utensils and gadgets are made for the right-hander. Even the fridge-handle, like that of many other doors, is designed for easy opening — to the right. When it comes to meal-prepara-tion, the left-handed lady of the house has to battle a battalion of dextral tin-openers, peelers, corkscrews, etc.

Using the pepper-grinder, she turns it the wrong way, the knob comes off, and she ends up with pepper in her face. And, as for all those knives that bring her such bane and pain with their righthanded serration — so prone to slip or slow her down — no wonder she dreads each day. To cut bread or carve a roast, to pare an apple or slice tomatoes, to spread butter or segment grapefruit and cheese: just how can she slice food straight when, to her, the blade is round the wrong way? Serving-up time, too, presents its problems. Steel-bladed spatulas defy her attempts to cut and serve pizza, and soup splatters everywhere from a back-to-front ladle.

Outside the home, the southpaw is also the odd-man-out. At the bank, the pens are almost always attached on the right-hand side — unless, of course, the teller who put them there is a fellow-sinistral — which does happen on occasions, amid much comment and consternation from dextral customers. Their upset uproar, until the matter is rectified, is in marked contrast to the silent resignation of the southpaw. For that’s the way it is, when you are left-handed. Still at the bank, the sinistral struggles with his chequebook. Simple for a right-hander — who has only to hold the cover with his left hand and sign the slip with his right — the southpaw has to crisscross his hands just to keep the book open. After all, how can you sign a cheque when your books keeps flopping shut? And not only cheque-books cause problems. All sorts of stationery hinder his writing with their hump in the way of his hand. Ringbinders, address books, spiral notebooks, compendiums, diaries

and trip books: all open righthanded. And rulers, reading from left to right, leave a left-hander working in the dark. With pens, too, his hand obscures what he has written. You can usually tell a southpaw by the smudge-mark on the little finger of his left hand. Even an everyday object like a phone-box creates havoc for the sinistral. The door handle is, as usual, on the right-hand side. Inside the booth is a pay-phone with a receiver to be held by the left hand, freeing the right hand to deposit coins, dial and jot down numbers or notes. Once more the left-hander is handicapped. He has to twist and turn, holding his left hand across his body to write anything down. As to his days of work, he has to carefully choose his career, for some jobs are difficult, almost impossible, for a southpaw to pursue. Sinistral brick trowels, farriers’ knives, carpenters’ aprons and tools, barbers’ snips, hairdressing scissors and industrial tailors’ shears are few and far between in most shops. And, as for a musical career, have you ever seen a left-handed violinist’s lone bow going the opposite way from the rest of the string section in an orchestra? The southpaw cannot even play sport with ease, for much sports equipment is geared to right-

handed players. Dextral golf clubs and gloves are useless to lefthanders. The same applies to righthanded softball gloves and fishingrod reels. In many other leisure-time activities, the southpaw is disdvantaged. Whether watching TV, listening to a record, or taking a photo, the-controls are usually on the right. He cannot even play cards in peace, without being told, “Come on, hurry up, aren’t you ready yet?” As for taking time out to relax in his garden, he has long since found that gardening tools, too, are biased to the right. Just try asking, at a hardware shop, for southpaw secateurs or a sickle. Like scissors, secateurs need their blades reversed to be skilfully used by a sinistral. Usually, when it comes to the scissors-family, most southpaws have learned long ago, even from kindergarten days, to give in and cut, somewhat clumsily, in the right-handed way. For everyone — even a left-hander — sooner or later has to master the art of using scissors, whether to cut cardboard or paper, material or hair, wallpaper or wire, bandages, nails or food. And so, the sinistral sullenly snips away, forced to succumb, at last, to that right-handed tool. In his home or on the street, at work or play, on the sportsfield or

in the garden — in fact, everywhere he goes — the southpaw feels maladroit, gauche and slow because of the right-handed equipment he is forced to use just because he is part of a minority. By now, his dextral day is, at last, drawing to a close. The southpaw decides, for a change, to have a late meal at a restaurant. But when he eats out it is taken for granted by the cutlery layout that every diner will use the knife with his right hand. Glasses are also placed for right-handed ease. Cake forks, too, can make life socially miserable for the sinistral, especially if the seating is somewhat stringently-spaced. Then, after all his efforts to cut the cake with the unserrated edge, a mere nudge from his neighbour can send his cake hurtling through the air, leaving him with only crumbs. And so, after yet another strenuous, struggling day, the southpaw retires to rest — and what does he see? That darned dextral alarmclock. Muttering to himself, the southpaw tries to sleep, swearing that he will brain the next dextral who says, in a condescending, and usually loud, voice, “Oh, you’re lefthanded!” Often regarded as inferior, deformed, or a weirdo, the lefthander feels tempted to retort: “Anyone can be born right-handed: some of us overcome it.”