Left-handed

(audio link)

My first conflict with being left-handed was in kindergarten. I distinctly remember gripping my large pencil firmly in my left hand and drawing on a very pulpy type of paper with lines on it. I had my tongue out (as is apparently essential for balance for 5-year olds attempting to draw) and was pressing quite hard, quite studiously, when all of a sudden there was a terrible pulling on the pencil. The teacher had tried to get it out on the first attempt, but hadn’t counted on my farmboy grip, and the pencil stuck. I remember being a little confused as to just what was going on, but continued on my path to self expression. The teacher snatched at it again and got it this time. I looked at her a little cross and still confused, her face only displayed, dare I say anger? Even a little disgust? Yep on both counts. 

The teacher, in all her well-meaning goodness, promptly took my right hand, opened the fingers, and placed the pencil in it, a calm, but satisfied look on her face now that she had won. I looked at the pencil and, knowing that I had to finish my drawing, promptly placed it back in my left and continued with the drawing as if nothing unusual had happened. I really remembered completely forgetting the incident with the teacher at that point, it was a non-issue. It was a blip in my little-tasks-in-life that became a voided thought. 

Until she grabbed my pencil again.

This time she let out an exasperated puff of air, having to wrestle it from my fingers. I wasn’t thinking about it at all, but apparently my fingers remembered the violation. She finally got it out and again placed the pencil in my pried opened right hand. And again, I looked at it, remembered my task, and placed it back in my left where it belonged. It felt proper. I looked up at the teacher and she had this slightly angry, “fine, have it your way!” look on her face. I wasn’t too into accepting others’ emotions at that age, lucky for me, and I went back to my drawing without another thought to her attempt at subjugating me. 

I find it interesting that I recall that incident quite well. I have other memories from that age, and some very clear ones from age 3, but why that one? The other memories I have of those very early years didn’t quite seem so…pivotal. Yes, that’s the word. And I feel that in it’s own way, it was life-changing, at least a life-statement. Here I was at the age of five asserting my individual nature without conscious application. It felt proper. Being left-handed. [Related: psychiatric research has found that people who are most left-sided in their lateral preferences are also the ones least likely to attempt to shift their hand writing preference from left to right due to social/cultural/family pressure. Hmmm. Now I feel better.]

I suppose that seems like an odd thing to say, I mean, I don’t suppose right handers give a thought to feeling “proper” about their handedness, but us left handers have to take whatever solace and we can in this right-handed, man-cultured world. I make that last distinction for a reason, I mean when was the last time you ever saw a left-handed tree? Nature it seems, doesn’t have a handed sway. No left-handed streams or fields. Okay, you’re thinking they don’t have hands. I’d say you’ve been peeking, good job. Awareness of your surroundings is valuable. With regard to those things, I imply a left or right-most distribution. Presence.

Some mammals, on the other hand (not quite a pun there), seem to demonstrate a handedness. Cats, for instance, will prefer one paw over the other when fishing an object out of a glass, or the like. Chimps tend to use one hand over the other to insert, and then draw out, a reed covered with yummy termites from a hole in the mound, and horses tend to favor one hoof with which to stomp with.  

But animals in nature don’t define a civilization’s functionality on handedness. Unlike man (scissors, hand tools, double doors with center pulls). Animals also don’t build philosophy or superstition surrounding handedness. Again, unlike man. Seems it wasn’t too long ago, historically speaking, that we were still associating sin, evil and death with lefties. Sitting at the right hand of God and all that. Who was on His left anyway? Oh that’s right, the Holy Ghost. There we go again, even ghosts get the left association.

When one reads accounts of people from as little as thirty years ago tying their child’s left hand behind them so as to force right-handedness, it makes one wonder how much of that mentality still prevails? And just how many of you right handers out there are closet left handers because of such fear-inspired forced-correction?

Now, there have been advances in my time. Scissors come in many flavors now. I remember trying to use a scissors as a child in school (and at home, but don’t tell mom about the encyclopedias. Listen, those beautiful photos of snakes were just calling to be cut out and used to scare my sister). Cutting out circles was particularly difficult using the right hand. I remember the frustration of trying to use a scissors upside down in my left, a painful experience, and then having to try and use my right for the task, another painful experience. My mind just wasn’t in it.

Speaking of mind, please check out Dr. Betty Edward’s books on drawing and creativity using the latest left-brain/right-brain research to get you to “see” with the right mind. Very functional material and a great education on our creative connection. 

I find brain research on the subject particularly interesting. The phrase “the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing” has biblical origins not actually pertaining to handedness, but I find that in training people in self-defense that phrase has greater meaning with a majority of people. A lifetime of prominence with one hand, one side of the body, tends to make the other side ignorant of actions, motions, feeling and fine-tuned subtlety that the other side enjoys freely and effortlessly. That has it’s own problems when it comes to predetermined visualization and established neuromuscular pathways when learning new motions/actions, all those set patterns can actually be deleterious in training something new, live, and dynamic vs another live, dynamic partner. Surprisingly, that’s when the ignorant side often shines. It simply doesn’t know that it doesn’t know, and it accepts what is present without predetermined “prejudice” or “sway”.

In all the world, only 10-13% of us are left-handed. I look at that and just have to say, “wow”. That’s not a lot. There’s even an international left-handers day on August 13th to celebrate.

Disproportionate to the numbers above, we lefters (I am a poet, I have poetic license to make up words) find ourselves in the most public and interesting of forums. For instance, eight of the presidents were left-handed, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Just to throw something interesting in the mix, other noted lefties are: Marie Curie, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Lewis Caroll, H.G. Wells, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Paul McCartney, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. And I have a brother who’s left-handed, a growing artist in his own right..er, I mean left. 

Looking at some statistics from my own family supports research that indicates where there is dyslexia, there is a higher percentage of having a family member who is left-handed. And left-handedness is genetic (gene most closely linked with it is LRRTM1, found when trying to locate a link between dyslexia and handedness). And it is passed down from the father.

It’s quite interesting looking through and back on the family line. Out of nine of us kids, my brother and myself are artistically expressive and left handed. My father is an artist in his own right, a cartoonist who could easily spill articulated images onto the page when us kids pestered him enough growing up. He’s right-handed, but we forgive him for that. I have some uncles who were carpenters, creating some very neat pieces by hand back in the day, as well as one who was a published writer and poet. And I have a sister who is actually quite good at poetry, but I think I’d have to lock her in a room alone to force the words out of her. Practice, sis, practice.

I could really go on and on, there are so many interesting points to make. But I will end with the following. Since I’m talking about handedness, I should probably also talk about “mindedness”, as they are interrelated. Left-handed people, in general, access more of right brain functioning. Right-handed people, in general, access more left brain functioning. Separate brain hemisphere functioning is called brain lateralization. I find it incredibly interesting that the left and right sides of our bodies are cross-wired like that. Left brain, right body - right brain, left body. Overall, we tend to favor one processing methodology of mind over the other - hemisphere dominance - though all of us dip into the other at times to function adequately in the world and with regard to specific stimuli, as I do with my writing - not particularly a left-handed, right-minded strength. 

In writing this I’ve had to convert a lot of imagery (how I think), guided by intuition, into words, sentences, paragraphs, trying not to care about spelling or editing what I write until later. It’s like there’s this overall (holistic) conception of what I want to say channeled out into a thin stream that my left mind gets ahold of and then does it’s “word” thing. Read Dr. Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. You’ll learn how to actually feel the cognitive shift. Quite interesting indeed.

I’ll leave you with a famous gent’s saying that I find particular favor, and truth with, especially if you follow his works and life story. He proved the value of his statement and lived it, powerfully flexing his right mind to assuage some of his anxieties and need to probe the mysterious. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He wasn’t quite a left-handed person, he used both, but there’s no question he was in his right mind.

For those of you who like tables, I include one here for you. Thank you for reading.

Left brain dominant	Right brain dominant
• Visual, focusing on images, patterns	• Verbal, focusing on words, symbols, numbers
• Intuitive, led by feelings	• Analytical, led by logic
• Process ideas simultaneously	• Process ideas sequentially, step by step
• 'Mind photos' used to remember things, writing things down or illustrating them helps you remember	• Words used to remember things, remember names rather than faces
• Make lateral connections from information	• Make logical deductions from information
• See the whole first, then the details	• Work up to the whole step by step, focusing on details, information organized
• Organization tends to be lacking	• Highly organized
• Free association	• Like making lists and planning
• Like to know why you're doing something or why rules exist	• Likely to follow rules without questioning them
• No sense of time	• Good at keeping track of time
• May have trouble with spelling/finding words to express yourself	• Spelling and mathematical formula easily memorized
• Enjoy touching and feeling actual objects (sensory input)	• Enjoy observing
• Trouble prioritizing, so often late, impulsive	• Plan ahead
• Unlikely to read instruction manual before trying	• Likely read an instruction manual before trying
• Listen to how something is being said	• Listen to what is being said
• Talk with your hands	• Rarely use gestures when talking

Dyslexia. Left-handed. Middle child.

Dyslexia. Left-handed. Middle child.

(audio link)

An interesting mix, wonder how I got through school at all. Yep, that’s me. I imagine people outside of driving in a car with me and giving left-right directions, probably don’t know of my peculiarities. In fact, it was in just that case that a dear girlfriend of mine commented to the likes of, “Oh my God, you really are dyslexic.” Left and right have no attachment in my mind, if given a direction of “turn left”, I have a 50-50 percent chance of getting it right, though in truth it’s less chance than that in real practice. Now, if you say turn left and point to the left with your hand, then I got you covered.

I am assuming a lot of people who know me, don’t know this about me, and it’s certainly not something I go around telling people. Well, until now. Why? For one, I think it’s quite interesting. I also think that if anything I say here can help someone else who’s having the same challenges, then it’s worth the exposure.

Things really hit home with me when I started working at UPS three years ago, where I part-time load  the brown trucks for delivery. When I started I was loading anywhere from 900-1300 packages in three or four trucks in about a 4-hour shift. Accuracy is big with UPS (though one could accurately claim some managers lose sight of that when feeding their ego, but I digress). If I have trucks designated 6A, 6B, 9D and so forth, it becomes more a mental workload than physical - and the physical workload is substantial. Here’s a little in-depth from two perspectives:

I heft the box from the conveyor belt, grasping it by its opposite corners, and noticed its label: 6A-4000. I move to the truck nearest me,  glance at the placard with the 6A designation, and enter it, placing the box on the appropriate shelf and leave to get another package, which may be for this truck or one of the others. 

That’s what I grasp to be how other people do it. For me, it goes something like this:

I heft the box from the conveyor belt, grasping it by its opposite corners. I sharply focus on the 6A designation, a mental pause that has to be enforced internally lest the numbers “reshape” to the ones from the truck 6B I just came from and had in my head, the other numbers don’t quite matter yet. I turn to the nearest truck and spot the placard, again sharply focusing on the designation, look at the label on the box in my hand again, and enter the truck. Here the second numbers matter, I find the 4000 shelf and place the box there, tilting it again to make sure the label does indeed have a 6A designation on it. If I am at all distracted with other thought or simply under pressure of time or other stress, an interesting thing happens: as I walk away from the shelf, the remembered image of the label can actually reshape in my mind, or quickly shift to be remembered as a 6B or even a 9D. I mentally doubt the accuracy of what I had just seen, and go back to re-read the label, confirming it was indeed the 6A. I leave the truck to go get another box.

Sometimes, I have to go back more than once. 

This process is mentally fatiguing. After 200+ boxes you actually feel your brain is sore (it’s more like after the first 50 or so, but practice lessens it some). It’s the focus that has to be enforced to keep the image of the numbers in your head accurate. And it’s easy to doubt them. My double and quadruple checking has its benefits, it made me the most accurate loader in the entire building for years. People just have no awareness of what I have to go through to maintain that.

During the first year I came to an impasse, where the effort was so difficult I asked if I could change the label designation to something else. I had to tell management it was simply getting too difficult to keep a 6A or 6B straight (didn’t mention dyslexia). They allowed this, mostly I think because of my performance level, and they wanted to keep that high. So I got them named words for the most part, instead of full alpha-numeric, which helped greatly, but I had to be careful there as well. In truth, I have difficulty with ODIN and MING and other combinations I tried, my brain doesn’t do well with their similarities. ACAL and MING work for me, different enough, not as many same straight vertical lines. 

Most dyslexics are visual thinkers, I am nothing less than. This helps when remembering situations, people’s faces and the like. Names to faces is difficult unless I can attach the “meaning of that person” to the name, and even then it isn’t a guarantee. Some of my marital arts students may often noticed me calling them or others by a different name. Let’s say a girl named Anna, bears similar qualities in that moment to one named Paula, then for me it’s easy to slip out Paula’s name for her when addressing her. I’m sure plenty of people do that once in a while, for me it’s frequency that makes it stand apart, and the difficulty of trying to reattach the proper name to the person even after knowing I made the blend. Often times I will pause, or appear to be going on to another thought, as in, “that was really great…” where I am trying to insert a name. I’m actually pouring through a lot of mental attachments and hoping the right one connects in time. 

Being a visual thinker has its advantages, though. Especially when doing things I am passionate about or have great interest in. In high school, in classes I enjoyed (as well with teachers I enjoyed, and this fluctuated), I could mentally recall full pages of text and images as if reading them, chapter after chapter. Today I don’t have the word-for-word accuracy I did back then (at least not in that quantity), but the content is there. Anything less than interesting or passionate is like loading boxes on the trucks.

There are other problems, writing a “d” and substituting a “b”, things like that, but those relating to writing aren’t as difficult to catch for me for some reason. Probably because I’m a bit passionate about the expression process of writing. In that I’ve been fortunate, I’d dislike not being able to communicate properly this way. With reading it’s a mixed bag. Writers who tap into a more visual expression when writing tend to be easy reading for me. Writers like theoretical physicist Brian Greene, novelist Peter David, Octavia E. Butler or Dan Simmons are worth mentioning in that area. And there are many others. Some writers for me, however, make reading like sledding on rough gravel, not only is the ride bumpy, but quite disturbingly loud. 

And then there’s that counting from 100 to 0 test. I really thought I’d sail through that. Quite surprised how my brain tripped and struggled through some of it. I made it to zero, but I mangled about twenty digits and their order along the way. Like I said at the start; interesting. And did you know there is such a thing as auditory dyslexia? I’ve tasted a little bit of that.

Writing this article is a rather big thing for me. It’s about revealing things we consider weaknesses about who we are. No one likes to do that. Especially me. I went through a period of time where I had every eye exam possible (every one, all the way to CT scans) and in-depth hearing exams as well, because I simply didn’t want to admit that there was something else, something of the brian’s interpretative functioning that was the cause of problems I was having. I discovered that my body is in great shape, my mind too, I just have to work harder at some of the things I didn’t know others didn’t have to. 

We’re in good company, though, there are some impressive, successful dyslexics out there, and historically. And there are many things we do excel at. 

Maybe this article will help you look at people, or your children, differently. Certainly, no matter what our outside presentation, we all struggle with something. That perspective at least might help you in dealing adverse characters in your life. We are all not what we seem. 

 I’ll voice about the left-handed and middle child in the next articles. Thanks for reading.