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| Gail Koch is a junior journalism major and writes 'And Another Thing' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. |
When my grandma was a kid in school, the teacher used to strike her knuckles with a ruler every time she would try to write something with her left hand.
Being a lefty myself, I shudder at the thought.
To imagine living in a time when being left handed meant people would view me as an evil, awkward or retarded child and beat me because of it is unheard of today.
Our society has shed many of its biases since then, growing more accommodating to the left-handers who make up about 10 percent of the U.S. population.
But the fact remains we are still very much living in a right-hander's world.
From scissors and corkscrews to camcorders and golf clubs, inventors and manufacturers have failed to love lefties as much as their right-handed counterparts.
Like many other southpaws, I've grown used to this fact over the years and have become ambidextrous because of it.
While there remain activities -- writing, bowling and swinging a baseball bat -- that I can master only with my left hand, others -- cutting with scissors, maneuvering a computer mouse and swinging a nine-iron -- come just as easily with my right.
Jane M. Healey, a left-handed child neuropsychologist and author of the book "Loving Lefties," explains that left-handers rely on the right side of their brain as its dominant half, but lefties have more flexibility in calling upon either side of their brain to accomplish tasks that, in right-handers, are rigidly controlled by the brain's left side.
This could explain how I am able to sloppily teach myself to play guitar with my right hand but fail to handle a fork unless it is in my left.
Although I don't often think of myself as a minority, at times my left-handedness can stick out like a sore thumb.
Like when I go out to eat with family and friends and inevitably wind up rubbing elbows with the right-handed person sitting next to me. Or when I'm the only one who walks away from class with smudges on my hand from taking an hour's worth of notes.
As much as these everyday occurrences can be nuisances, there's a part of me that's very attached to the uniqueness of being a southpaw.
I like knowing that being left-handed makes me more inclined to have a higher I.Q. and better remember things (which could explain why, if you ask me what I was doing a year ago today, I could probably tell you.)
I also enjoy the fact that lefties have an entire day (Aug. 13) in which to celebrate their left-handedness each year on International Left-handers Day.
Then there are the well-known, much celebrated men and women who share their left-handedness with me.
Comedians like Dave Letterman and Whoopi Goldberg; actors like Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise; artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci; politicians like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton; athletes like Ted Williams and Steve Young; musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain ... the list is endless.
So the next time someone wants to bring me down by telling me that lefties die before righties do (a myth that remains unproved), I could be bitter and blame it on genetics.
Or I could smile and tell them I wouldn't have it any other way.
Write to Gail at glkoch@bsu.edu
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