Left Power

Hi, my name is Carol and I'm a lefty in a right-handed world.  In elementary school, I went to a "special class" for lefties.  The goal was to help us handle a pen or pencil like a normal person, to aim for legibility.  The results: iffy.  I still hold my pen strangely.  I still smudge every piece of paper, every check, every birthday card.  The side of my left hand is still covered in ink.  Oh, the indignity of it all.  Like most lefties, I'm ambidextrous.  I had no choice.  I can use scissors like a righty.  I can throw a ball like a right-handed girl.  I can wave hello like a right-handed beauty queen.  I'm a lefty in a right-handed world.  There's a line of products just for lefties. I had a pair of left-handed scissors.  I lost them.  I had a left-handed pen.  I lost that too.  I've bought left-handed spiral notebooks and left-handed cooking utensils and waited for life to get easier.  The results:  iffy.  I'm a right-brain in a left-brain world.  As a new mom, I read up on the lefty thing.  No kid of mine was going to have to endure the same inconveniences, to spend twelve years trying to write left on a right-handed desk.  Oh, hell, no.  Not my boychicks.  So I did what the books said.  I placed Cheerios and spoons and sippy cups in the middle of the high chair tray, so that the boys wouldn't automatically reach to the left and become lefties in a right-handed world.  The results: iffy.  The eldest is a lefty like me.  He plays hockey left-handedly and shoots a basketball left-handedly.  His handwriting is illegible.  Thank God for texting.  I haven't seen him lift a pen in years.  But he plays a mean guitar right-handedly, so there's that.  The youngest is a righty like hubby.  The youngest has the greatest printing I've ever seen.  Since he first picked up a pencil, I've marveled at his skills.  "How do you do that?" His answer:  "How do you not do that?" The best part about being a lefty is the instant camaraderie you share with other lefties.  "You're a lefty!  Me, too!"  It's a lot like meeting other Jews in places you don't expect, like Wyoming or a tiny village in Greece.  Lefties need to stick together.  We're lefties in a right-handed world.   Baby, we were born this way.