The BBC have posted an interesting article on the merits or demerits of being left-handed.
The main reason for reserving one hand for eating and one for using a pebble to clean yourself after the waste has been expunged, was one of simple good sense. No-one I know enjoys eating shit.
Sadly, even when good facilities for cleaning both hands became available, folks who preferred to use their left hand were stigmatised. My experience as a child, an example of ignorance and stigma by my father. Picking up my knife with my left hand at the dinner table resulted in being struck on the knuckles with whatever he held in his right hand, and I was lambasted as being ‘cack-handed’ – IOW shit-handed. Even later there were similar remarks when I used a screwdriver to remove a screw. ‘They never made anything for left-handed people Joe!’. Probably true, but turning a screw anti-clockwise is easier with the left hand, than it is with the right – at least for me. I drive a screw in with my right hand and remove it with my left.
Later on, I worked with him on open steel work, building the extension to a switch-house at Blyth Power station (another project I’ve out-lived) He was embarrassed when I unloosened a reluctant nut, using a spanner in my left hand – one he couldn’t budge.
The simple truth is he’d created a ‘monster’ someone who made best use of his body, irrespective of the nonsense preached by others.
The BBC article highlights the use of latin in language. Sinistro and Destro are Italian adjectives for left and right. In the UK left-handed folks are ‘sinister’, right-handed folks are ‘dexterous’.
So good sense in early human behaviour has been handed down to us as an insult and a compliment. Complete twaddle.
Intelligence? IQ tests demonstrate how good you are at IQ tests. They serve no other purpose than to categorise folk, and provide yet another label that psyche’s love to stick on people. If I was wearing them all, I would resemble a badly misdirected parcel by the once-Royal Mail.
Me? I thank my father’s ignorance and stupidity for making me virtually ambidextrous. I thank myself for the endless irritating questions I asked him, and for cross-questioning the rubbish told by some teachers at school.
joesportugal 