SOUTHPAWS- Battle of The Left-Handed

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The odd RareBreeds!
You've met them. In cars, at bars, at work and in art museums. But what stands them out as odd?

Allow me tell you a story embedded in another story that will make up the story of their oddites.

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My cousin had a chance at making a choice after his B. Sc., when he got double positive responses from two Universities he applied for scholarship abroad. The first was an American campus in South Carolina while the second consent came from a UK- based Canadian University situated in Oxbridge, Glasgow.

Like most Nigerian families, we hype the American dream; so, one could imagine the shock we all had when the said cousin decided to go to 'conservative' England instead of 'free' America. I had made a case to him the weekend prior to his departure from Nigeria:
"the hustle is tough in the UK- what with the heavy taxation- while America is the land of vast opportunities".

He had looked at me, a naughty smile creasing his dimpled cheeks and said:
"You know I love manual cars"?
"But that is totally off the point", I had answered.
"Nope, it's not. London drives on the right and America on the left. In London, I'll have the gear lever in the right-hand and that means a lot to me".
"It makes no sense, you are left- handed remember", I pursued. I knew he was a freak for manual cars and gear shifts. But this just couldn't be the reason for such a decision.

"Semantics", he sighed. What you call the left is the right hand for me", he concluded walking away.

**
His message was instantly passed, which reminds me of a more elementary scenario- at St. Mary's when I was still in Secondary. Continental etiquette demanded that we eat with our forks in our lefts and the knife in our rights. We were never born with these things and most of us had never heard of them till we found ourselves in the school refectories. It was an herculean task we undertook to fork- up tiny beads of rice into our miniature mouths. We almost usually ended up spilling a good deal of grains on the long dining tables and going to bed half-hungry afterwards.
Yet, there was a few that this new method of eating gelled naturally. Those were the ones whose left hands were their right. They would have rushed their food with fork-fulls and waste nothing at the end.
For us right-handeds, the frustration was unbearable.
Oneday,I decided to eat with the fork in my right. Our refectory prefect had known the few left- handed ones by names and faces. Nobody was ambidextrous, but I had learned the word from the dictionary.
So, one can imagine his confusion when he accosted me and I lied that I was ambidextrous. He didn't even know what that meant; a disease or a defect.
It took God's grace for me not to bear 'ambidextrous' as a nickname through my stay in that school.

**
But what does it even mean to be handed? Who defines handedness? Which of our hands is right and which is left? How does one become right-handed, left-handed or ambidextrous?
These are the very questions I will not be able to answer.
Since a huge population of the world are right-handed (because it is the 'normal' and we've been taught from childhood to give and receive things with our rights), the left handed people of the world are rare-breeds.

They fascinate us when they do things with their left hands, which we normally do with our rights. And there is more to it. They are more brusque and elaborate in their handedness. By being brusque, I infer lively, tart, sharp and fierce. This is why they excel more in the arts and crafts.
This ability comes from the unusual organization of the brains of left-handeds and particularly the role of the right hemisphere of the brain in creating a person’s visual perceptions. Thus since the visually perceptive right-hemisphere controls the left hand, artistic people viz: artists, architects, musicians and mathematicians are more likely to be left-handed than the population average.
Lists of famous left-handed Artists usually include Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso; writers including Lewis Carroll, Bill Bryson, Berthold Schwartz and Janet Street Porter; animationists Matt Groening and Bart Simpson; directors like James Cameron and Spike Lee; musicians like David Bowie, Celine Dion, Eminem, Noel Gallagher, Ricky Martin and Sting$
Others great left-handed people in history include Alexander The Great, Albert Einstein, Jack The Ripper, Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Aristotle, Neil Armstrong, Henry Ford, Marie Curie, Joan of Arc, Helen Keller, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Prince William and Winston Churchill.
In recent times, great guitarists like Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Corbain, Tim Armstrong and Albert King are all left-handed. So too are great actors like Drew Barrymore, Kim Basinger, Pierce Brosnan, Charlie Chaplin, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Matt Dillon, Morgan Freeman, Whoopi Goldberg, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Val Kilmer, Marilyn Monroe, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Julia Roberts, Sylvester Stallone, Scarlett Johansson and Chewbacca the Wookie.
But did you also know that Wasim Akram, Sir Bobby Charlton, Diego Armando Maradona, Pele, Lionel Messi, Manny Pacqiuao, Paula Radcliffe, Barrack Obama, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack are left-handed?
I bet you didn't.
Did you know that the famous 'South-Paw', a boxing punch that delivers full and apt is naturally left-handed? Have you thought why in most cases it becomes the K.O package? That is because our brains have been conditioned from childhood to believe in a right-handed world. We are taught not to take the left-hand seriously. Thus, even a boxer who had been severely trained to be dogged on both hands fails to believe- at most times- that when the right hand delivers a mere jab, the left could come with a dose of shock that could knock him out flat. Thus, the brain becomes dull- in milliseconds- and fails to send a command to his arms to protect himself from the almighty Left Hook. In more than one occasion, this becomes the drive-home tactic for right-handed boxers like Robert Guererro Johnston and Marvin Hagler. Converted south-paw fighters like Mike Tyson used it frequently. Manny Pacqiuao is still using it.

Thus,  though the world demonstrates that left- handedness is rarely patronized- even the scissors, chain-saw, camera knob and American car gear-levers are right-handed. Though a lot of left-handed people die from using right handed tools daily; we should always remember that the most alluring scientists, thinkers, conquerors, Sportsmen and artists are left handed.

So let's join the world to celebrate the South-Paw as the defense of the left-handed against a right- handed world.

Happy Left-Handed Day.

N/B: if I tagged you to this post, it's either you are left-handed, ambidextrous or I just like  you.

©Anny J. u'Dorphia,
Aug, 2017