My Left Hand

I am a right-handed person. My wife is a left-handed person.

Because of this, I have become a little more sensitive to the nature of being left-handed. When you're left-handed, you angle for the left side of the dinner table. There is also the need to have appropriate scissors. You also must think about how to arrange the buttons on your computer mouse. Lots of small things to consider.

One of my favorite books is Joe Perry's biography "Rocks", about his life as Aerosmith's lead guitarist. He plays right handed, but one of the things he reveals in the book is that he is left-handed, so learning the guitar was an exercise in flying upside-down for him. I wonder how his learning would have changed if he started with a left-handed guitar?

I also remember a golf tournament many years ago. Tiger Woods was in jail, his ball against some brush. He wasn't able to take a normal stance, but to the announcers' amazement, Tiger turned the club upside down and took a left-handed shot. It made sense that he would know how to do this as there are some professional baseball players that can bat from either side of the plate.

As for me, I make an effort to use my left hand when I think I have a choice. For example, I will try to open a bottle of pills or reach into a cupboard for a mug with my left hand. It's a small thing, but I feel some solidarity with left-handed people. Both sides of my brain gets some usage when I spread the work like this, and that's got to be a good thing.