The handedness thread (because we need one)

[Razorsmile]

My left hand is stronger than my right (squeeze harder, lift more) but my right ... well, what jenny said.

[txanne]

Dude, you have a gripping hand??

[jennythe_reader]

My left hand is stronger than my right (squeeze harder, lift more) but my right ... well, what jenny said.

Exactly.

My left hand is for holding things still/out of the way so that I can do the important stuff with my right hand.

[peneli]

I think I could have been more ambidextrous if I'd kept doing things with both hand as a kid, but as I grew up each action settled to a hand that it went with. (I particularly remember the year in elementary school where my left arm was broken so I wrote with my right  hand for several months and it wasn't a big deal. Not so any more.)

Writing is left, mousing is right, archery is left, driving is right because my first car pulled left all the time, I eat like a lefty... I've only just learned to knit (wore my first handmade scarf for the first time today  ) and since I was taught by a righty I'm knitting righty. It doesn't feel like a right-hand-dominant thing to me, though, because the motions all involve both hands.  My right is way more nearsighted than my left, but because my arthritis has always been worse in my left knee I have weird problems with leg-dominance. Left wants to be but is often unable to, if that makes sense.

My dad was always so proud that his daughter was a lefty, it was so cute. He's right-handed, but I don't know if he's one of the trained-out-of-left-at-school types or not. I think he just always wished he was a lefty. It meant that I grew up with this idea that left-handedness was a special privilege, like having secret fairy blood or magical powers. 

[Beth]

This is making me think.   I'm mixed-dominance.   I write, paint, draw, play guitar with my left hand.  I use tools -- knives for cooking, scissors,  screwdrivers, wrenches, etc., with my right hand.  Though I can use the other hand for any of those.   But it's interesting, now that I think about it, how the right-brained stuff comes through the left hand, and the left-brained stuff through the right hand.  But my sports of choice require that I use both sides equally: swimming, dressage, tai-chi.

[jimsmyth]

Lefty.  For most stuff, at least.

Used to write on chalkboards right-handed. It made sense for the bigger strokes or something.

Bowl right-handed.  It's the 'power' hand, left is 'detail' hand.

Type with either, or both, on either computer or phone.  Usually do keyboard-left, mouse-right, as I roam, nomadically, from computer to computer.

Found out I golf left-handed (as opposed to really badly) when a friend lent me a left-handed club.  (Maybe I should try basketball left-handed?  That is another of my 'really badly' sports...)

Sewing, scissors, both lefty.  Cooking is both-- right stirs, leads in kneading; left gets the knives.  Eating is left-preferred, but able to switch.

Testing when I was a youngster confirmed left-hand dominant, but visual feedback needed to comfortably cross the midline.  No idea what that means in real life.

[Troubadoura]

Very very right dominant. Even with my feet. Can't stand on a scooter with my left foot. I find it strange, because my left hand is very much "in use" when I play musical instruments. But writing or using tools - impossible.

[Shira]

I'm very right-handed.  If there's any possible way to do something with my right hand, I'll do it.  If I go very slowly, I can write with my left hand, but it takes awhile, and is rather messy.

[Elizabeth Bear]

I demonstrated something interesting about my incomplete dominance at I-con a week ago. Which is that while I am entirely right-handed for writing on paper, I can write on chalkboards equally well left-or-right handed, and left-handed may even be a little easier, because I am pulling the chalk towards me rather than pushing it away.

And in fact, people look at you funny when you start off writing on the chalk board left-handed on your left side and pass the chalk into your right hand to write on your right side.

Well, it was cramped behind the table!

[Bunny M]

I demonstrated something interesting about my incomplete dominance at I-con a week ago. Which is that while I am entirely right-handed for writing on paper, I can write on chalkboards equally well left-or-right handed, and left-handed may even be a little easier, because I am pulling the chalk towards me rather than pushing it away.

And in fact, people look at you funny when you start off writing on the chalk board left-handed on your left side and pass the chalk into your right hand to write on your right side.

Well, it was cramped behind the table!

Ha! A fine blow against the forces of 'handedness'! Freedom from it's mimetic oppression!

 

[dancing crow]

That is a cool thing to do with ambidexterity - I was going to say handy, but stopped in time.

I read a small piece in one of my art journals about a woman who insisted that her brain talked to her with her left hand. She'd write a question with her right hand, and then switch the pen to her left hand, and an answer would pour out onto the paper. She used the answers as the basis for her artwork.

I tried that once or twice, but I'm not sure anything unexpected came from it.

[kayjayoh]

That is a cool thing to do with ambidexterity - I was going to say handy, but stopped in time.

I read a small piece in one of my art journals about a woman who insisted that her brain talked to her with her left hand. She'd write a question with her right hand, and then switch the pen to her left hand, and an answer would pour out onto the paper. She used the answers as the basis for her artwork.

I tried that once or twice, but I'm not sure anything unexpected came from it.

Some of my friends do that: write a question with the dominant hand and the answers come out from the off hand. They call the off-hand writing their "brane" and say it gives them good insight. I've never been able to get anything from it, myself.

[pnkrokhockeymom]

I am soooooo RIGHT handed it's scary.  The only thing I can do with any consistency with my left hand is type and drink coffee.

My son is right handed but plays guitar and shoots (with a hockey stick, not a gun) left (in Michigan we have every hockey stick both left and right handed, too; I don't think he would know what to do with a right-handed stick). 

[kayjayoh]

Yuck. I seem to have injured my right thumb....possibly a laptop touchpad/clicking stress injury. I've got my thumb in an Ace immobilizer and am finding out how annoying it is to lose the use of my dominant thumb.

[jimsmyth]

Baseball (well, sort of) last night.  I apparently bat right-handed.  Left just feels really odd.  (Right only feels a little odd.)