My childhood was slightly traumatized by being left handed. Here’s a list in reverse order of the worst things that a lefty kid has to deal with:
4. Those crappy green scissors: In school when it was time to cut things, the first thing I had to do was find the pair of scissors with the green rubber handle. They were always dull and never worked very well. The right handed kids could cut circles around me.
3. Can openers: This would be higher on the list except for the fact that kids don’t really have to open cans that often. Turning the crank on the can opener was almost impossible for me with my right hand. In fact I used to flip it around backwards and try to turn it lefty, but that never worked well either.
2B. Writing in a 3-ring binder: Tons of things I did in school involved writing on paper that was in 3-ring binders. This was extremely difficult and uncomfortable because my arm was always sitting on top of the rings.
2A. Trying to write without making a mess: Writing from left to right would cause my hand to drag across everything I’d just written. As a kid it was basically impossible to do this without getting pencil or ink all over the side of my hand, and then in turn smudging it across the paper.
1. (By a large margin) The Nintendo Controller: There were MANY Nintendo games that required pressing the A and B buttons as quickly as possible. My inferior right thumb just couldn’t do it fast enough. I often had to flip my hand over and awkwardly press the buttons with my index finger. But like the can opener, it wasn’t much of an improvement. I was never able to win a fight in Ice Hockey. That was traumatizing.
To read more of my blog “37 seconds of sports and other stuff i care about” you can follow me on twitter @lucidsportsfan, go on facebook and “Like” my blog fan page, or just go to lucidsportsfan.blogspot.com.
About Mark Vandeusen