Brannavan Gnanalingam is a lawyer and novelist, including the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted Sodden Downstream and Sprigs. His latest book is Slow Down, You’re Here.
OPINION: I do something that bemuses most people in my family. Whenever somebody picks up a pen with their left hand on screen, I yell, “that person is a left-hander!”
They could be a complete nobody – an extra in a movie scene or a detested politician – my reaction is still the same. My right-handed family generally look at me to say, “Who cares? Why would you notice that stuff?”
I am one of the approximately 10% of the population who are left-handed. In the Middle Ages, left-handed women could have been accused of witchcraft. The devil was also considered left-handed, so that added a further element of concern to the regular mediaeval punter.
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This is demonstrated in the words themselves – the word ‘sinister’ derives from the Latin word for ‘left’, and the word ‘left’ derives from the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘weak’.
There were also cultural implications from being left-handed – I eat with my left hand, which is also a no-no among cultures who eat with their hands (because your left hand is used to wash the unclean parts of the body).
Unlike many left-handers who, as a defence mechanism, pick up some basic skills with their right hand, I am completely useless with my right hand.
There was a famous Hungarian shooter, Károly Tákacs, who lost his right (shooting) hand in World War II. He taught himself to shoot with his left hand and won two Olympic gold medals. If I lost my left hand, I’d become functionally useless. I’d probably end up eating face down.
Stuff
“It was a point of pride growing up. Being left-handed added an element of cool,” writes Brannavan Gnanalingam.
I didn’t care about the historical connotations of left-handedness. It was a point of pride growing up. Being left-handed added an element of “cool” difference – even if there were little annoyances growing up.
Most things are designed with right-handers in mind, which is fair enough I guess, given they’re the bulk of the population. Scissors were difficult to use, and apparently I used to freak my mother out by the way I used them (it looked like I was going to cut off my fingers).
Can openers were a hassle, as you’d use them inversely. Regular ink pens were a no-no unless you wanted to Jackson Pollock your exam papers. University lecture halls had nifty writing desks for right-handers – us southpaws had to contort our backs to reach over our right arm to write.
Alistair Hughes/Stuff
At some point, our difference became normalised because everyone realised it was no big deal to be left-handed.
Ned Flanders’ Leftorium on The Simpsons sounded like a great idea (and I understand there is a specific left-handed store in Christchurch).
I made sure to repeat statistics about left-handers being more artistic, more successful and better at sports, and ignored the study that found left-handers lived, on average, 10 years less than right-handers.
I learned about the famous left-handers, some of whom seemed slightly dubious. Did anyone really know the handedness of Aristotle and Joan of Arc?
Others though, especially for music-obsessed me – such as McCartney, Cobain, Hendrix and Bowie – simply confirmed that we were cool. That said, I played musical instruments right-handed, the only thing I ever did dominant right-handedly.
I knew that being left-handed (and left-footed with football) had advantages when it came to sport, although it made little discernible difference to my sporting ability. I simply enjoyed watching the likes of Wasim Akram, Brian Lara, or the left feet of Dan Carter, Messi or Maradona.
Left-handedness really only started being accepted as normal in the mid to late 20th century. I was among the earlier generation of kids whose parents didn’t force us to be right-handed.
The thing I find fascinating about left-handedness is no-one has any real idea why 10% of us use a different dominant hand to the rest of the population. It’s not meant to be genetic, yet exactly half of my cousins on my mother’s side are left-handed. And that percentage has carried through to our respective children, too.
Phil Walter/Getty Images
Dan Carter in action as a left-footer.
All of us lefties knew who else was left-handed in class. I know which of my colleagues are left-handed (and I don’t work in a small office). My right-handed colleagues wouldn’t notice a thing. They, similarly, would say, “Who cares, why would you notice that stuff?” Nowadays, it’s all quite low stakes, truth be told.
The thing I’ve come to appreciate is that, at some point, people stopped caring about changing us left-handers. Our difference simply became normalised because everyone realised it was no big deal, and it didn’t impact on their everyday life.
It made no difference to right-handers to have a percentage of us do things a little cack-handedly. And it meant that some of us got to be ourselves, and embrace our subtle differences in a way that was affirming to us. That said, I still turn down ink pens when offered.
