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<\/a><\/p>\nNeedless to say, this is not real, it\u2019s a joke.\u00a0 But in fact being left-handed in an overwhelmingly right handed world is not easy.\u00a0 There is a store in London that provides left-handed things for those of us who are such.\u00a0 I wish we had one somewhere near Lexington.\u00a0 A left-handed pair of scissors would be helpful.<\/p>\n
We lefties make up only about 10% of the population, but a much larger percentage of the brainiacs.\u00a0 \u00a0For example, 7 Presidents in the last one hundred years have been left handed\u2014Herbert Hoover, Henry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama<\/b>.\u00a0 \u00a0 Or how about scientists or inventors\u2013 this list includes Da Vinci, Einstein, Marie Curie, or if you prefer rocket scientists and astronauts\u2014 Aldrin,Lovell, Duke, and Mitchell.\u00a0 Or how about painters and sculptors\u2013 Rubens, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Lewis Carrol, and too many musicians to list, but here are some contemporary ones\u2013Noel Gallagher, Sting, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix.\u00a0 \u00a0 I could go on.\u00a0 \u00a0I noticed something when I was named a Phi Beta Kappa in my junior year at UNC.\u00a0 Of the 50 or so getting the award that year (1973), a good 25 or them were left handed. How do I know?\u00a0 We all had to go to the podium and sign our names, and I watched very carefully to see who signed left handed.\u00a0 \u00a0While a\u00a0 goodly number of people do some things left handed, hardly any were writing their signature or writing in general left-handed by choice, in an age before the personal computer.\u00a0 My third grade teacher even accused me of deliberately breaking my right arm when we were being taught cursive writing, so that I could write left-handed.\u00a0 \u00a0She was\u00a0 wrong, but it was a common attitude, everyone needed to write right-handed, otherwise you smudge the page.\u00a0 I got excited in seminary when I learned Hebrew was a language written right to left.\u00a0 Hooray, a language I could write without smudging the page or the side of my hand.<\/p>\n
Being a lefty in a right-handed world may be a plus in some sports, but not in general. Did you know no one is ever called someone\u2019s \u2018left hand man\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s always \u2018my right hand man\u2019.\u00a0 And did you know that in antiquity if you were on the right hand of the ruler\u2014 you had an exalted spot, like Jesus on the right hand of the Father in heaven.\u00a0 No wonder the sheep went to the right and the goats to the left in that parable.<\/p>\n
And then there is the Latin word sinistra<\/em> meaning left from which we get sinister.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what Wiki tells us \u201cHistorically, the left side, and subsequently left-handedness, was considered negative in many cultures. The Latin word sinistra originally meant \u201cleft\u201d but took on meanings of \u201cevil\u201d or \u201cunlucky\u201d by the Classical Latin era, and this double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word \u201csinister\u201d.\u00a0 And \u2018right\u2019 became the English word used to indicate, correct or proper.\u00a0 \u00a0The anecdotal rebuttal. was \u2018only left-handed people are in their right mind\u2019. There were whole ancient cultures who were suspicious of left-handed people. In the ANE, when they built city gates they would build them, assuming the attackers would be overwhelmingly right handed, which meant they had to throw their spears over their own shoulders to aim at the enemy on the city wall.\u00a0 The Greek had suspicions about left-handed people as did the Romans later, and I could go on.\u00a0 It\u2019s been an uphill climb for lefties.\u00a0 \u00a0 And I am one of them.\u00a0 My dad taught me to play golf, but we could not afford left handed clubs. The end result was I learned to play right-handed, and I also batted right handed in baseball, while catching and throwing left-handed.\u00a0 But in basketball it was all left-handed all the time. No wonder it was my favorite sport to play, and which I was good at growing up.\u00a0 \u00a0 Then finally think of some our common terms\u2013 the left behind, or the left out.\u00a0 It\u2019s no fun being left out.\u00a0 That\u2019s for sure.\u00a0 \u00a0Thank goodness some of my favorite sports stars, like Sandy Koufax were left handed, or Lionel Messi who is left footed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Needless to say, this is not real, it\u2019s a joke.\u00a0 But in fact being left-handed in an overwhelmingly right handed world is not easy.\u00a0 There is a store in London that provides left-handed things for those of us who are such.\u00a0 I wish we had one somewhere near Lexington.\u00a0 A left-handed pair of scissors would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":69050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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