When you
write with a pencil, which hand do you use? More than likely, it is your right
hand. Only about 10 percent of the human population is left-handed. We are a
right-hand-dominant species. Very few other species in the world show such
strongly right-dominant traits. Many other species, including cats, dogs and
birds, are about 50 percent right- or left-dominant.
If you
are left-handed, you’ve probably noticed your minority status among righties.
Scissors, desks, computer mouses, knives and so many other daily implements
have been designed with the expectation that the user will be right-hand
dominant.
You have
probably heard about how historically left-handed people were said to be marked
with a curse, or perhaps that their left-handedness was the product of bad
upbringing or poor posture. In fact, in Latin, the word for “left” means
“sinister.” When something is “correct” in English, we say it is “right.” In
the Bible, left-handedness is scarcely a positive thing. It is associated with
deceit or trickery in battle, such as in the story of Ehud and Eglon in Judges.1
Some of you may have been born with a left-hand preference but were “corrected”
by your parents or caregivers to become right-handed so as to avoid these
superstitions about left-hand-dominant persons.
Still,
even given all the difficulties of being left-handed in a right-dominant world,
left-handedness persists. Whether it is through genetic fortitude or the
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