Is there anybody else who SHOULD'VE been left handed, but wound up a righty?

Fortunately, I wasn't bullied out of a natural preference by misguided parents or teachers. I was a little slow in developing hand/eye coordination and didn't really exhibit any preference between hands until the second or thrid grade. In fact, when I worked at the board I would start with my left hand, and switch to my right hand rather than work across my body.

I remember talking with classmates and since everybody else said they were right handed, I did too. It took me a while to figure out a way to remember which hand was which (my left eye sees significantly better than my right).

Actually rather than force me to use my "wrong" hand my mom and dad always just let me do whatever I chose to, but my mom has maintained her belief that I should've been a lefty. It does seem that I do a lot tasks that I don't think much about with my left (shaving, eating, brushing teeth, ironing etc.)

Curiousity finally got the best of me this last week--I decided to see if I could learn to write with my left hand! I know that's sounds kind of bizarre, but I LOATHE an unsatisfied curiosity! While It still feels a "different" and I don't have the speed that I do with my right, after only four days I have pretty legible left hand script--even throwing with my left has had a pretty steep learning curve. As of now, the left hand can't cope with "oddities" as well as the right (such as writing on a tablet balanced on my knee an so on) but I think that is just a matter of practice.

Has anybody else ever tried anything like this?

Oh yeah, for the record I have less than no chance of trying to learn to play guitar left-handed, it's taken me 23 years of work to get where I am now, and I ain't starting back up that mountain! :)

edited to fix a hysterical typo!

My teacher accused my mom of forcing me to switch. She didn't of course, I just switched hands for some unfathomable reason. I still favor my left hand for most everything but writing.

My dad was a lefty, and my son appears to be one too.

Same here--mine wasn't really peer pressure, exactly, just going along with the flow.

Back in the distant past when I played baseball, I had a cannon--which was why I usually wound up in the outfield, I could get the ball in from the warning track--I wonder how that would've changed had I used my left?

On second thought, I probably would've wound up pitching!

He went to Catholic school back when writing with the "sinister" hand still was good for, at minimum, a sharp whack with a ruler. As soon as he graduated and there were no brides of christ lurking about, he went back to writing with his left hand. He can bat or throw with either, which made him a fair baseball player when he was younger, and does pretty much everything else with his left.

And if my little experiment works out, I guess I'll be ambidextrous as opposed to a lefty. But if I am to be completely honest way back when I was a child it wasn't so much that I was equally good with either hand, as it was that they were both poor enough that neither one crowded out the other.

As somebody who ocassionally has trouble reading his own writing I think my mom is right and I bet on the wrong horse!

Then I picked my left hand to write, eat, throw, bat, golf, and hold a phone with - about 80%. I'm right-handed for guitar, scissors and computer mice.

unnatural that calling it right or left handed is fairly meaningless. I've hand plenty of "non-confused" left handed friends play guitar in the convetnional fashion and since they were all pretty damned good I don't think it held them back.

I tried using regular scissors lefty last night, that seemed pretty straightforward. However, the scissors didn't have a thumb loop and a double finger loop, they were more like barber scissors, with two single finger loops.

This exercise may be fairly pointless, but it has been kind of illuminating, and interesting to be honest.

"right handed" and pretty much only guitars are made for lefties?

I don't know myself. I haven't seen enough orchestras to say. :)

Speaking of the unnaturalness of guitar, Satriani, when he was giving lessons to beginners would turn his guitar around or grab a lefty and try to play it to remind himself how hard it is.

every now and then I try to write left handed or switch up the way I cut my food but usually end up making a mess. Sometimes I think my left hand was put there for symmetry purposes only :(

the way I cut food--at least not during prep work! I've always held the fork with myt left hand, knife in the right, but when I'm chopping stuff getting it ready to go in the pan I still use my right.

Back when I worked as a cook I never had blazing fast knife skills, maybe this might have played a part.

Here's something that is kind of overlooked: when you switch hands for stuff like writing, BOTH hands play an important part. One hand steers the paper, the other the pen/pencil. At the start I found my right hand was just as useless steering the paper as my left was holding the pen. Think of it like this, your left hand is the bass, holding down the bottom end, your right hand is the lead guitar, getting all the flashy solos.

But without one the other just won't get it done! :)

that just seems a bit reckless...lol but I figure how much damage could I cause with a butter knife and pancakes?

I think my problem is just lack of practice. I only attempt these things when I am absolutely bored so naturally I never give myself enough exposure to "left-handedness" to become comfortable. It actually takes me a bit of time just to manipulate my fingers around the pen to get them in proper writing formation.

On edit:
some people assume I am left handed because I wear my watch on my right wrist...I just do it because my left wrist is smaller and the weight feels more comfortable on my right side

I was a lefty till I was five, and then I apparently switched spontaneously!

I think it was because I saw all my little friends using their right hands, and since I wanted to fit in, I went that way too...

I still do a few things left-handed: Washing my face, and threading a needle...

Weird, huh?

My mom swears up and down that she didn't force me...And I believe her!

For a long time, I too had trouble remembering which hand was which!

:hi:

I knew there was more reason than just your unfaillingly good nature to like you. (Although to be honest that is really more than enough!)

I think we have exactly the same story. Have you ever thought about switching back, just to see if you can? I'm enough of a "science-y" type to want to see if my experience is typical. About 4 days (at 30-60 minutes practice per day) to reliable legibility. I'm not sure how much practice it'll take to get enough speed to take notes during a meeting, but I think a month or so is realistic. Certainly less than the 35 years or so I've had at using the right hand!

And as a total off topic FYI, as the primary season winds down, I'll probably be back on DU a lot more! :hi:

Say hi to anybody who might have wondered where I'd gone off too.

I actually did try to switch back, in high school...

I started to use my pen left-handed, and my writing, though never beautiful, did get readable!

But I was terribly slow, and awkward!

It'll be awfully good to see you more!

:hug:

It's either the right way or the wrong way. :P Seriously, it's not acceptable for any other kind of string instrument to have the player switch the strings around and play it backwards... why is it suddenly okay with guitar? Both hands are doing completely different things, it's not like you're only playing with one hand. The left hand is doing all the complicated work, all the right hand is doing is rhythm for the most part. And if you're doing hammering and whatnot, the left hand takes over there anyway. It just seems silly to me to manufacture a backwards guitar to market it towards lefties... when the left hand is the dominant one when playing 'right handed' on the instrument anyway. :P

not to mess with the expense and the ridiculousness of a left handed guitar. That a right handed guitar would work well.

In fact, I think I sometimes forget I have one. I wear my watch on my right wrist, and sometimes it'll stop because I haven't moved my arm enough to activate the self-winding mechanism. For me, the right arm is a vestigial appendage.

He writes lefthanded, bats righthanded, throws left handed, kicks (soccer) right legged, shoots a hockey stick right handed. He's really a mess when it comes to which is which but I let him do his thing.