A Hand for the Left Out
Let’s get something clear left off the bat: Society is biased against left- handers in language, attitude and social and physical structures. That needs to change. So, many thanks to UCLA’s Daniel Geschwind and colleagues for their new study confirming the genetic component of brain structures, destigmatizing and suggesting among other things that left-handedness is not some willful decision or environmental accident.
The findings continue medicine’s gentle study of the brain’s complex engineering. They also suggest intriguing avenues for future research on why an elite 10% of the population becomes left-handed while everyone else, like Dr. Geschwind himself, gets stuck in the boring majority.
What’s clear is that right-handers designed and built our society. Where’s your car gearshift? The radio? Seen many left-handed dictionary or address book tabs lately? Try pulling open most building doors with your left hand. Turn over a check; the endorsing line is just right for--my, what a surprise!--right-handed signers. In fact, the bank’s little counter pen is probably perfectly placed for righties and the chain too short for lefties. You’ll look hard for left-handed fishing reels, power saws or stove mitts with thumb and Teflon positioned for lefties.
And it’s been this way for centuries--gauche is French for left and awkward. Latin for left is sinister, which explains why wedding bands go on the left hand and spilled salt goes over the left shoulder, both to ward off evil.
For generations teachers tried to break left-handed writers; fortunately, that didn’t change Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Michelangelo, Cole Porter, Leonardo da Vinci. Being gauche didn’t seem to thwart Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Norman Schwarzkopf--or Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax and Pele. Left-handed talkers dominate TV in daytime (Oprah) and nighttime (Jay Leno, David Letterman, Ted Koppel). Never mind their politics, Presidents Truman, Ford, Bush I and Clinton were lefties (so too James Garfield and onetime presidential candidate Ross Perot). And Robert Redford, Bruce Willis, Whoopi Goldberg and Julia Roberts haven’t fared poorly with dominant left hands.
Maybe what we need is a new Bill of Lefts requiring sensitivity training for right-handers to understand how left-handers cope. Maybe right-handers should feel, well, left out for a while. Let’s make northpaws sit in left-handed school desks, use left-handed scissors, potato peelers, ladles and ice-cream scoops. Wouldn’t you think Ben Franklin could have invented some solution? He was left-handed. But then so was Jack the Ripper.
