I remember having a heated argument in a bus with one friend about his criticism generally directed towards non-vegetarians. Why it was okay to eat plants then – I asked smugly. Because they don’t have emotions – pat came the reply. Here is an article – THE PRETZEL LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM – that debates that logic. After almost 10 years, I have a fellow sympathizer in Ted Rall. I am not justifying the blatant omnivorous or carnivorous nature, but I am against what I call Veggie-Nazis and also their tactics to emotionally blackmail people into becoming veggies not to mention the convoluted logic.
I have neither the talent nor the style to describe an eclipse like Annie Dillard does in her essay Total Eclipse. (You can read about the essay here and here.) But I did not want to miss a chance. So I set the alarm for 5:30 AM and kept a camera handy while going to sleep on Saturday night. Up I was at 5:40 AM sharp, after only one snooze. I trotted to the terrace of my building and intuitively opened the door on my left hoping it to be the right direction. And there it was - a small white beautiful crescent strip. You could not have told it was not a crescent moon if you did not know of the eclipse.
I tried taking a few pictures but the strength of my camera falls significantly short when it comes to taking pictures of distant objects like moon, not to mention my own limited knowledge of photography to handle such situations. The night was cloudless, without much haze and a building shielded the ambient light giving good view of the changing moon. I was able to spot only one well known landmark, (!) the big dipper. I also saw a small shooting star and a faint satelitte that quickly vanished behind some stray clouds. And even though the afternoons have started becomig characteristically warm, the night was nippy enough to warrant folded hands.
The eclipse proceeded at its normal pace, allowing enough time to the marooned Christopher Columbus to extract food and help from the scared natives.
“What, the endless meetings, but you did all the talking!”
“No, I mean, all the writing”
“Yeah, like you are going to remember all this…”
“No, writing with the left hand”
Ah, now we were speaking on a topic! Is it really that amazing? Well, may be it is…for it appears only about 12% of the population can exhibit the dexterity! Or the gaucherie, actually!
Persistence by an interested person and good topic (in my opinion) - he carefully noted the position of the paper…for it was laid almost horizontal - at an angle of more like 10 degrees with the edge of the table contrary to the conventional 90 degrees, with the head of the paper on extreme right. The pen was moving furiously in what many perceive as an unnatural movement. Even I am so used to seeing people write with the right hand that when I see someone write with the wrong hand, it seems unnatural to me…. But isn’t the whole world opposite to a few of us? I have been chastised in childhood for the position of the note book, but the teachers never realized that unlike others if I were to keep it vertically on the desk, I would not see what I write! They would compliment the handwriting though, for other brethren of this community were not so lucky in this respect. Here is an article that shows various ways and positions of writing used by the southpaws. And I follow this style:
Only that in my case the page makes more acute angle than shown in the picture.
There are many things yours truly cannot do:
Only one thing I was trained to do with right hand is eating in Indian style. My grandmother insisted that I practice and eat with my right hand. This does not work in a stand-up style eating so common at weddings and parties; I automatically switch to the left hand. Otherwise, there was no pressure to convert!
I once hurt a bank employee with the sharp end of the pin used to hold the check and the payee-slip together, for I put it in with the left hand and she tried to remove it with the right hand, making her fingertips vulnerable to the sharp-end of the pin. I still use my left hand and also the pin, but it is inserted holding the papers upside down, making it right-side-up!
I often get chastised at religious functions, for I make the offering with the left hand or extend my left hand to accept prasad, which is a big no-no. But I persist nevertheless. At my sister’s wedding, the priest was logical enough to let me ‘do’ things with the left hand, the photographer was not. When we entered into the new home, my mother requested that I put the right foot inside first – the request was granted immediately ;-), but the following ritual was all left-handed. Over time, I have almost turned into a maverick-left-handed rebel. But to be fair the society has also become more tolerable of this minority community. And I still cannot tighten the screw (pun intended)….
Not only is the hand usage asymmetrical, there is a preference to using even one eye and ear dominantly! Now I only need to find out which eye and ear use dominantly.
Do animals show hand-preference? Some primates do, according to this article . Some animals also show preference based on the prey. In some cases, some species of snakes have evolved teeth that makes it easier to break open snails that have clockwise shells. But according to the famous psychoanalyst Steven Pinker, most do not. For, Pinker believes that human brain is more complex than primates’ brain is. Because of the evolved skills such as complex logical and abstract problem solving, language etc., our brain needs special rewiring, distributing tasks of logical processing to some areas and in return showing favor to handedness to make motor controls simpler. But I guess, why so many right-handed and so few left handed is not a simple question to answer.
Now the title words: all mean left handedness in negative sense with exception of southpaw. Etymology of southpaw is interesting. In the baseball game, the striker stands facing east to avoid the afternoon or evening sun, so a pitcher throwing the ball with his left-hand faces south.
Jibe: No right-handed people were hurt in writing this post.
