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In the US, normally we cut food with the knife in our sgtrong hand, using the fork in the weaker hand to stabilize what we cut. Then we switch the utensils to opposite hands. That lets us actually eat with the fork in our stronger hand.
Here is an extract from my web site on wright handers eating Left handedly.
One of the few things right handers do left-handedly is eat with a knife and fork let me explain.
The victorian rich decided, that to avoid accidents involving drinks being spilt on guests as they were served, it was necessary to swop the knife and fork around.
i.e. wine would be served over your right shoulder right-handedly whilst your being served you would stop eating. The person to your right would sill be eating and if he had his knife in his left-hand then he would nock the wine being served all over you.
So to avoid this the fork was held in the left hand (elbows in) and the knife in the right, thus allowing for one guest to get served and the other to cary on eating.
What the rich did every one else did to.
A simple test
If you give a left-handed person just a fork to eat with they will invariably pick it up with there left hand and if you give a right-handed person just a fork to eat with they will invariably pick it up with there right hand
if you then give them a knife the left-hander will pick up the knife in there empty right hand (as they are already eating left handedly). Were as the right-handed person would have to swop the fork to there left hand before picking up the knife.
I would like to know what you all think
Alan
Very interesting reading these things. I pick up the phone with my right-hand and hear better on my right side, I use my knife in my right-hand, I lay the table right-handed style (that is fork on left, knife on right). I cannot sew properly or knit at all and always had problems with sewing machines at school. My writing is awful and always smudges. I really enjoy cookery and do not any problems with any right-hand utensils. I have a very good memory for dates and telephone numbers that my family and friends are impressed at but have to write lists everyday for simple tasks, and my Maths is hopeless, hubby has to help with Maths homework, however I enjoy English and love writing poetry when I get the chance. I iron right-handed however my Dad is left-handed and he does everything left handed, I have twin Aunts – one left and one right-handed – ?is this weird. One other thing – my Niece is left-handed and when we get talking about lefties, I discovered that we always have to tie our laces up the leftie-way. WHAT ARE OTHER PEOPLES’ EXPERIENCES ON THESE THINGS, WOULD REALLY LOVE TO HEAR, you can contact me through this site.
I am the only lefty in my family. Must have been a very recessive gene! I am 62 years old and have not had many situations where being left-handed proved a problem. I have never used left-handed scissors or other left-handed “utensils.” I always found a way to adapt and save my sanity. I have always started notebooks and journal writings from the back to avoid the wire spine.
I always notice someone who is left-handed and we usually start a conversation I guess you could say I really like being a lefty and enjoy the challenge!
Until I read this website, I would never have noticed. I watched the Administrator of a govt agency invite questions after a talk. The podium was to the right of a panel table. Yet, he turned to the right to recognize people with their hands up. Even after being “even handed” and asking for each questioner’s name, he call on them in order of right to left placment in the room. A big lesson for where to sit when entering a “theater” style or oblong meeting room!
I have also learned that to convey confidence/power when shaking hands, it is important that a person’s right hand be on top (evidently well known to politicians). It would never have occurred to this lefty. The alternative might be to shake “vertically” at all times.
This is a question about books for lefties.
What percent of the books for lefties have the binding (spine) on the right side?
Hi everyone, I teach in school workshops(Wood&Engineering Basic) and take great pride in being a lefty and specialising in teaching left orientated students how to cope with the discriminatory workshop layout, tools and basic machinery. You cannot change what manufacturers produce (Tools&Machinery) but you join them then beat them with a little clever thinking and application. Get used to the fact that its a right handed world, it is not going to change, its a left handers job to defeat them.
I’ve been a leftie all my life, 61 years and thanks to my Aunt being left-handed, no one even seemed to think my being a leftie was odd at all. My Aunt’s teacher tried to force her to write right-handed in the 1930’s and my grandmother made her leave my Aunt alone. I was the only leftie in my immediate family and none of my 5 daughters were left handed, although, so far, 2 of my grandsons are lefties.
Since no fuss was made about my left-handedness, I thought everyone smudged their pencil writing, had pens that clogged up and rulers impossible to use because they were up-side down. My teachers never once mentioned my left-handedness to me. Have other people besides me had trouble with spelling, for instance, mixing up “el’s and le’s”? I can usually tell if a word is misspelled by looking at it. I also must be careful writing down numbers. I tend to transpose them. I have had other people say that I wrote “up-side down” and my mom could not teach me to crochet and learning to iron was a hassle-using my left hand looked awkward to her. A person can usually stand on either side of the ironing board and modern irons have interchangeable cords. They one tool I use that is specifically left-handed is scissors, although I’d love to get pens and pencils and other things, they are too much more expensive than “regular” items. This week I ran across a first. It was a right-handed paring knife at the home of a family member. It simply did not work left-handed and I could not use it.
Once in my lifetime I could not use my left arm or hand at all for several days after major surgery. I had to feed myself, and everything else that I had to do for myself with my right hand. It was terrible. I even tried doing a crossword puzzle which was just silly.
I didn’t know that lefties typically hold the phone in the right hand, I do, but it’s because I hear better on that side.
I like being left-handed. I feel that it makes me more creative. When I play guitar, I use it right handed. I’ve never used a left-handed guitar, but I like to try one. If I use a pick, I tend to drop it into the center hole. I’ve read that lefties hear music differently and I believe that is true.
Perhaps my rebellious spirit comes from being left handed and having to always try to do things “my way.” Either way, I’m dedicated to helping those young ones who are left-handed and are fighting the right-handed world.
I ruined a beautiful vacation in Acapulco when I borrowed a water-proof camera and while on the beach (not wearing contacts) I was taking pictures. When I held the camera to view through my left eye, I did not realize that I had the camera backwards. Not until I had the pics developed and they were of all the things behind me — my beach towel, lots of sand, a road.
check out my left hand website
non commercial
http://www.youtube.com/user/wornlimTV
feedback….?
Some teachers told me I would never have pretty hand writing. I guess I took this as a challenge. I not only had beautiful penmanship, but I learned calligraphy and taught it to my jr high students when I was a teacher. I used the overhead projector to teach them to write. That didn’t bother them by my being a leftie. I also taught second and third grade students cursive writing, and my being a leftie didn’t affect them.
My second grade teacher tried to force me to write with my right hand. I always went back to my lefty way when she left my desk. As a teacher, I found out that a child needs to have established a hand dominance by school age. If it is not well established, the child may have problems with reading. Parents need to know this and let their child have the dominance they were born with.
Even in stores such as Hobby Lobby and craft stores, I find no calligraphy pens for lefties. They usually have to be special ordered. Stores should carry things for lefties without having to order them. We should be able to go into a store and find what we need. If a store carries materials for righties, they should be forced to carry them for lefties.
I just sent the following in to the editors of this Ezine: “I am a Tv writer & would love to lend you a hand: During the Television Writers Strike almost two seasons ago, I was approached by a young woman who was doing her paper on “lefthandness,” wilst walking the picket line at NBC Studios in Burbank; I filled out a questionaire as did Jay Leno.
The point was: I had never thought about my ‘affliction’ because I was one of the lucky ones who had been changed via a harness, when in the first grades to the accceptable right-handed scholar… this in a religious-oriented school, btw.”
So……..
I then developed a massive stutter that, for all intents and purposes (pardon the cliche), changed my life forever… specifically my interactions with other students and friends who now viewed me as somewhat defective.
I would like to help out in any way you need in your efforts to get this horrendous process, these discriminatory practices reversed.
Of course that was the simple version: The real tragedy related to my entire communicative life — It was very disturbing for me to speak with those necessary in my profession in order to pitch ideas BECAUSE of the stuttering caused by the mechanical change to righthandedness. For almost twenty-five years, I stuttered heavily, so heavily people would turn their heads and look in other directions when I spoke or attempted to speak. More than one job was lost because I just could not effective communicate the ideas so streaming through mu head in a coherent fashion, one understandable to others. I was so embarassed by this as a young boy when I attempted to speak to a girl.
The first girl I fell in love with who remains the ove of my life (her name was “Gail”), was listening to a joke her mother had made when she answered my call and when I was trying to say ‘Hello’ to her, stammering and hung-up on the “H,” a difficult letter to enunciate, I thought she was laughing at my stuttering, and although she apologized profusely as I continued to attempt speaking, I relived that moment for eons.
All of this caused by someone determining that I should be a right hander in order to be “Right” for society.
After I began noticing that my left hand could do some pretty amazing things when I was thirty-nine, I tried to use it and found that my stuttering diminished.
Scary.
I now speak well, no stuttering.
But my life was changed forever by this force-change to an acceptable right handed personage.
I’VE COME OUT OF THE DARKENSS OF THAT RIGHT_HANDED SYNDROM…
How many of us were forced by ignorant people to use a hand we had no use for?
I’m now 40, and have been practicing writing with my left hand, the correct hand, my dominant hand. I feel each time, a relief in my head and body. Even though my left is clumsy mechanically, it just feels right. My rings fall off my right hand fingers, not so with my lefts..I am a newborn writer and finally found my fortè–the creative mind was discovered. The change (having to write right-handed) has brought much confusion into my head, at times I just block up.
I’ve been quite perturbed with the bias attitudes on right brained people. I had to comment on a herbal academy website as they quoted that standardized methods cannot be established due to the rebelliousness and independent right brained thinkers that must do it their way. Still, something inside my head keeps telling me you are not left sided–that good conditioning–even though almost everything I do involves my left side.
To clear this confusion would be miraculous indeed!
I think it would be helpful to list what actions most lefties do. There are some opposites involved that are interesting, for instance; it seems lefties talk on the phone with the RIGHT hand. This brought back my confusion of what I was. But my mother is leftie too and she does this. It leaves the left hand free, the dominant hand to do other things.
Also eatting a piece of toast, we do it with our RIGHT not the left, then I noticed righties were ate that toast with the LEFT. Interesting. What side of the page do lefties staple on?
Hi there
Just read what Jackelin said and I have been lucky in that never forced by the teachers to be right handed …
I’ve learnt to do things with both hands but I am a total left hander .. Until some thing goes worng with it .. ha ha
I do write with a fountain pen and my hand writing depends on the time of day and frame of mind .But on the most part I’m a good writter . Today it does not appear that kids are taught to write with either hand .which I find so sad
I also use my right hand to hold the phone .. this is so can do other things with the left hand .I eat my toast with my left hand
I staple pages nearest my left hand . always . Also can’t do ticks the right handed way . They always come out back to front
Hope that helps ,, C
i would like a free lefthanded calendar please. thank you
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