My Experiences Being A 'Lefty'

I once had a student seminar in my college and the seminar was taken in a classroom and it was consisted of many college chairs and in front of the class just a projector screen with its projector and a desk where the presentations taken place. After entered the room, I selected which chair that I want to seat. Then I chose a spot that I like which was near a window. The college chair was a wooden one and it looks old and small. An integrated small desk was on the right hand and it was fitted well with my right hand. I felt so uncomfortable because I am a left handed and if I use the desk I couldn’t face the presentation well. So I used my friend’s desk on my left to write something about the seminar.

Writing using left handed is a hard thing for some reason, because writing using left hand is using power to move your hand from left to right and could make a bad writing if the wet ink is hit by the hand. Writing on whiteboard is even more tiring, the unfortunate left-handed person has to raise his or her left hand high and push the left hand to the right until it gets tired.

Another occasion when I was in architecture, I had to create a house scale model (maquette) and the tools that I had to use such as scissors. Scissors that we know are designed to be used by right handed. So when I used it with my left hand, my hand started to ache especially when cutting thick paper or cartons. The funny accident happened when I was cutting a paper, I hold the paper with my right hand. And suddenly my right hand’s middle finger was cut by the scissors. Well, it bled and then it dried quite fast after I bent it using some tissues. When I continue cutting the paper, without my purpose, my middle finger was cut in the same place again, so the bleeding was worse than before. The result was the scale model were not really good and a scar on my middle finger.

Well, left handed people in the world are 10% of the world’s population based on Wikipedia. So that’s why the things that are used by human commonly right handed: scissors, music instruments, computer devices, watches, hand phones, and even wooden college chair. They are more popular and can be found easily. If we want to use left handed stuff, we have to ask or order the factory to specially build it for us or like in the United States, there are some stores that sell left handed stuff. The rarity of the left-handed tools or devices has very tight relation to the buyers who are mostly in small number and they are not really profitable, so that’s why they are little bit more ‘expensive’ than the normal ones.

In culture, especially in Indonesia, the local norms usually tell the little kids that using left handed is not good or prohibited. So the kids who were born to be left handed are forced to train their right hand for eating, shaking hands, giving/receiving something, playing guitar, or writing on a college chair. The term ‘left’ is already has its own meanings in many cultures around the world which is related to “dirty hand”, evil, unlucky, improper, etc. So, it is very rare to find toleration for left handed social interactions and left handed things that are made for left handed people in places that have this kind of culture.