Was I born left handed?

[lrw60]

I know it sounds like a silly question, but I could have been born left handed and There is no one left alive who would have known it for sure.

Let me explain. When I was about 5 or 6 I had a firework, a Roman candle I think, explode in my hand. It burnt my hand rather badly and I couldn't use it for a long while. When I went back to school with my hand unusable I expected to be excused writing. The teacher had other ideas. Just write with your other hand she said, everyone else is. This memory came back to me a few months back for some reason (I am 60). It suddenly occured to me that if everyone else was writing with 'the other hand' and most people are right handed, then they must have been using their right hands and it could have been my left hand that was damaged. I have used my right hand ever since, but I am not ambidextrous except for some things, and I eat as a left handed person. When I sit down to a meal that has the cutlery set out I swap the knife and fork over. I have tried eating as a right handed person and it is almost impossible. I can't write with my left hand, but I can use a hammer in either hand.

I went to see an Iridologist, someone who reads your condition by looking at your irises. She said that she could see I had damaged my left hand as a child. I remembered the accident and said no it was my right hand, believing I was always right handed. She looked again and repeated that she could see the damage was to my left hand. We left it at that! (no pun intended!)

I think there is a way of telling if you are a leftie or rightie by which foot you start to walk on. If it's the right foot then you are left handed etc. True or not?

Lee.

 

[Sid Bonkers]

Most right handed people are right eyed too and visa versa this is not 100% but "most" are as far as I know.

To find out which eye you favour stick a finger in the air and holding it at arms length line it up with both eyes open with a mark or target some distance away, the further away the better.

Now close one eye and then the other all the time sighting the "mark" with your finger, you will notice that looking with one eye your finger will appear to move off the sighted mark and when looking with your other eye your finger will stay lined up to the mark or target, this is your favoured eye.

Right eyed = right handed & left eyed = left handed (in most cases)


Hope that makes sense....

 

[Marvin]

I'm definitely left-handed (as were both my parents and one of my two sons). But using the experiment above, I'm definitely right eyed! I write with my left hand, use a hammer in my right, a saw in my left, and a paint brush in either. I use scissors in my right hand (but that's because scissors are right-handed as a rule). I use a knife and fork in the conventional manner, but hold a spoon in my left hand...which causes a problem when I need to use a spoon and a fork at the same time. I'm obviously a crazy mixed up kid!

 

[faeoj]

both my parents are right handed but 3 out of the 4 of us are left handed! I only write with my left hand and do everything else with my right eg sports, painting even butter bread with my right! I did the eye thing and came out left! I did severely break my left arm when I was five and was in cast for nearly 2 years with pins and plates so maybe that's why! my brother is in the army and has had to learn to do everything with his right hand and had to learn to use his right eye as well! I reckon it's in your genes!


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[lrw60]

I tried the test Sid. The target is about 20 feet away. My left eye lined up perfectly with the target, my right eye was well off!

Are there any other tests?

 

[paul-1976]

I tried the test Sid. The target is about 20 feet away. My left eye lined up perfectly with the target, my right eye was well off!

Are there any other tests?

I could mention one but it might sound a bit rude on here but it's the one that determined in my mind whether I was a lefty or righty. :wink:

 

[Cinderella]

My eldest daughter is cross-dominant so she is right handed but left eye dominant. She also uses her cutlery the other way around and also she plays pool with her left hand. I guess that's because you need hand/eye co-ordination and she finds that she plays better with her left hand. When she was at junior school they tried to get her to use her cutlery the normal way but they never succeeded. It's a fascinating subject.

Cinders

 

[Sarah69]

I am right handed but eat left handed, my son who is left handed eats right handed!!

 

[Pilgrim22]

I write left handed, use knife and fork right handed, use spoon left handed.
I used to play sports and use tools left handed. When in the army, I shot a rifle right handed, but shot a pistol left handed. Go figure


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[bernie.freeman]

I am left handed , so is my brother, all other family members are right handed. However my niece and my granddaughter are both left handed. The only task that I do left handed is to write, everything else I do right handed.

 

[bernie.freeman]

My mom did all that she could to get me and my brother to write with our right hand, including strapping pens to our right hands !!! :lol:

 

[Geocacher]

Interesting -- I know my brother was 'encouraged' to be right handed by my parents and by the school and as a consequence seems to have a disadvantage in his fine motor skills. Most noticeably in his writing, which though it is readable it lacks the style, flow, and consistency that most of us have in our writing.

I tend to use either hand fairly interchangeably. I'm not sure if I was meant to be left handed or not, I write right handed out of habit but can write left handed as well. I ate right handed in America but since I've moved to the UK I find that eating with the fork in the left is very natural for me. I will happily use a hammer, paint brush, screwdriver, soldering iron, or any other tool in either hand though I prefer to shoot right handed. I use a mouse with my right hand but can touch type with either hand singly or both together.

What I know of myself is that as a foetus I was exposed to a synthetic oestrogen that is known to disrupt specialisation and lateralisation in the brain. Tests have shown that I am neither right or left brain dominant. It's an advantage to me in my work because I can easily combine creativity and logic. To me, many things are going on at once in my mind and I can leave problems to 'simmer' in the background knowing that at some point they will resurface when a resolution has been reached even though I have diverted my consicious thought to another issue.

I can sing along with music whilst simultaneously typing an e-mail even though in theory both should be using the same area of the brain. I can also write different text with both hands at the same time. As a child I wondered why my peers had difficulty patting their head whilst rubbing their tummy, because I simply did it when asked without any problem. Clearly there is some seperation and duplicity that allows these things to happen.

I'm curious if others with mixed right/left dominance experience anything similar.

 

[hornplayer]

My nephew went to school already able to read and write. ( scary school teacher sister-in-law!) Left handed. At the end of the first week he came home using his right hand, because that's what the other kids were doing and he thought it must be the right way. He also went from drawing racing cars and fire engines, to squiggles and big blobs. Again, because that's what the other kids were doing. He quickly became completely ambidextrous, just like his dad. ('Cept my brother did it so he could write lines faster!) He's 17 now. He still writes with which ever hand is closest to the pen. I wonder how many kids follow the crowd in the early years?


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[lrw60]

I tried the test Sid. The target is about 20 feet away. My left eye lined up perfectly with the target, my right eye was well off!

Are there any other tests?

I could mention one but it might sound a bit rude on here but it's the one that determined in my mind whether I was a lefty or righty. :wink:

:?: :shock: :lol: :shh:

 

[faeoj]

I think I do most things right handed because I was taught to do most things by right handed people. like my parents showed me how to tie laces and stuff like that with their right hand so I just did it! in school all but one of my PE teachers were right handed so taught me to play sports with my right hand...the only left handed teacher also used his right hand for sports! defiantly easier to just copy than to learn to do it differently!


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[carnabychick]

Hi I also think I am naturally left handed. I write with my right hand but can't hold my pen the normal way, however I can with my left hand. Also I eat left handed, throw and kick better with my left side and hold the phone to my left ear lol.
I was at school in the 1970s/80s and think that maybe I got taught to write with my right hand as lefthandedness was discouraged way back then :twisted:

Shirl

 

[general_zod]

Try writing left handed if you can, I think it will take practice but it is possible to recondition the way you can do it.

I have always been left handed, but learned to write with my right hand just to see if I could. I cannot write perfect but I can write.