Taking my rightful place among bloggers on the left
I hereby join two other bloggers, Michelle Malkin and Tammy Bruce, in officially declaring myself to be a woman of the Left.
Of the dominant left hand, that is. I’m not only a lefty, I’m very strongly left-handed, from an unusually left-handed family. Of the four of us—mother, father, brother, and myself—only my father was right-handed.
Although my politics have shifted my handedness has not. I was brought up in a left-handed culture, one in which the minority was right. Not only that, but several of my best friends growing up were also left-handed. So I somehow got the idea that left was best, and that it correlated with all sorts of good things such as creativity and intelligence.
And in fact, left-handedness does appear to correlate at least somewhat with those things, as well as mental slowness and certain types of brain damage. It appears the left-handed population is more likely to harbor outliers of both types—I’ll leave it to my readers to determine which category I might fall into.
I’ve never felt left-handedness itself to be a handicap, however. Little things like having to learn to use a scissors with my right hand were a bit difficult at the outset, but now I wield one as well as anyone.
My mother, raised in the early part of the century, had a far more arduous time of it. Back then it was common practice to switch lefties, and she was forced to write and eat with her right hand. Perhaps for that reason, she’s had a problem all her life in distinguishing right from left (not in the political sense, however); her spatial differentiation is somewhat poorly developed. It used to amuse me when I was little (children are so cruel!) to watch her taking a surrepticious glance at her wedding ring when asked for directions, in order to cue herself as to which was left and which was right.
I have a theory–unsubstantiated–that there’s a higher-than-average number of lefties in the blogger population. I’d love to do a survey. In fact, I’d like to propose that Pajamas Media, often accused of being too heavily skewed to the right, try to redress that imbalance by trumpeting how many of its bloggers are actually lefties.
The following theory, discussed in Wiki’s article on lefthandedness, conforms to my own experience, and could help explain any preponderance of lefties that might be found among bloggers, at Pajamas or otherwise:
Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a “visual simultaneous” method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were a thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person ”” using the linear sequential processing style ”” would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This makes them appear (to the right-handed majority) as if they do not finish anything. Alternately, left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task. Perhaps the anecdotal evidence that suggests they are more creative stems from this ability to multi-task.
This is exactly the way I seem to work.
And Wikipedia has thoughtfully compiled this list of famous lefties. Take a look. I’m not sure how valid it is, but it’s fun.
The list of sports figures is exceedingly lengthy, as would be expected. The advantages of left-handedness in most sports is well-known. Musicians, likewise, seem to be legion.
But to me the most fascinating are the politicians and world figures. Sure, you’d expect Castro and Hugo Chavez to be lefties. But both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (switched, like my mother was, and like his own politics were–he started out to the left and ended up on the right)? And how about the three Presidential candidates in 1992–Clinton, Bush I, and Perot, lefties all. What were the odds?
FREAK!!!!
Sorry. Actually, I’ve always heard that left-handers were smarter, more creative, and more highly-sexed than us regular folks. I’m sure at least two-thirds of those attributes apply to our wonderful Neo!
I’m not sure how it explains Ross Perot, but anyway…
Variety is good.
I am also left-handed. Not sure what it means. Left handedness is very rare in my family.
This is exactly the way I seem to work.
Very interesting, Neo. It must have to do with your brain’s ability to communicate on both left and right hemispheres, because it takes your right brain to handle your left hand. So I heard that both parts of your brain had to run over to the other to process visual and certain kinds of thinking, more than right handed people, because it’s all compartamentalized in one hemisphere.
I like to finish one task and continue on with the next. However, I have learned to multitask, by simple memory feats or basic pre-organization.
Splice work into several parts, then start to do the parts in serial.
The advantages of left-handedness in most sports is well-known.
Left handed people also have an advantage in sword work ; )
What were the odds?
The conspiracy of the Leftists is beyond comprehension, Neo. It scares me. Here is another Leftist, Bookworm She blogged about this when it first came on, I believe. At the time I thought about you, Neo, but I didn’t remember at any time in the past you refering to yourself as left handed. Based upon the statistical probabilities, surely there cannot be that many Left handed folks in one centralized field of interest, I thought.
I think overall, you can have this guide. Women who are left handed are saints and brilliant wise folks. Men who are left handed, have problems. Right? Or left.
(before I read steve’s comment]
x
Raises my (left) hand to ‘fess up to leftiness, as opposed to Leftism.
The double irony, is of course, some of these Left handed folks, “were” on the Left.
We adopted two teenage boys from Romania. The younger had been here 4 years before he mentioned quite off-handedly (sorry) that he had originally been left-handed, but was made to switch in school. I don’t know what other countries still force children to switch, but apparently in Transylvania it was still common little more than a decade ago.
I am a lefty, and of my 3 sons, 2 are, including ONE of the identical twins. What does that mean?
Hmm. I am having trouble with the popcorn example. I am right-handed, but if I wanted to find the single differently-colored kernel among 1000 pieces of popcorn, there’s no way I’d look at the kernels one at a time. I would spread them out and scan for the exception. Is there really anybody who wouldn’t?
But then again, I am absolutely a multi-tasker, I always have several tasks running at once, and the word “creative” probably applies. So I suppose I could be a left-handed person trapped in a right-handed person’s body. Ack! Is there a support group for that?
I’m another leftie. I quite often confuse my directions like your mother did, although no one ever tried to make me right-handed.
I can remember not being able to use the scissors at my nursery school. Did the frustration change my life?
Count me as another leftie blogger. And definitely brain-damaged and over-sexed. The one theory I have read is that it is due to very mild hypoxia during birth.
There’s a book, published about 10yrs ago: The Left Handed Syndrome, if I remember right. Among its points: Lefties are disproportionately higher in 1)prison populations (are we entitled to civil rights agitation?); 2) Dispro. higher in architecture (= better spatial orientation); 3) Handedness data are generally not available–major league baseball had the best data base– and when the book was written, no Leftie ballplayer had been known to survive to 80 in the recorded history of the game. Accidental death (e.g., by use of a righthanded circular saw) was postulated as only a partial explanation); 4)premature babies have an increased frequency of lefthandedness (so it is a developmental deficit).
I grew up when there were only righthanded armrests on desks. We suffered in silence, and adapted.
It’s interesting about the popcorn, because that’s more or less how I read. That is, I look at chunks of words, rather than reading one word at a time. I’ve always assumed that this “chunky” way of reading leaves me missing about 15% of content, but long ago reading tests always had me showing 100% comprehension. Either I’m getting it all, or my brain automatically sifts wheat from chaff. As it is, I’m the fastest reader I know, and I guess now I know why.
I was originally ambidexterous, but switched to the left for writing when forced to make a choice. My handwritten papers had a neat part down the middle before I switched! Choosing which way to throw a ball was really hard!
Just like Bookworm, I too read in “chunks”, and am one of the fastest readers I know. (Some of my friends are in the same reading-speed range, and we’ve never actually raced, so I have to say “one of”). One time when I was in high school someone loaned me Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death. I handed it back a couple of hours later. My friend couldn’t believe I’d actually read the whole thing that fast, so he grilled me on the content of some of the later chapters — and I answered in ways that showed I’d not only remembered what I’d read, but actually thought about it in the process.
In addition, I’m a very multi-tasking person. Right now, I have two different tasks I’m working on simultaneously, plus I’m reading and commenting on blogs. I switch back and forth between them a lot.
In fact, I’m an almost perfect illustration of that Wikipedia article. Except for one little problem… I’m right-handed. (Very much so, in fact).
Heh. I’m the anecdotal counterexample!
Or maybe only left handed genius only applies to the women folk. As per my thesis.
I can read in “chunks” as they say, but only if I concentrate very hard. Which is quite draining. My regular speed increases if the text is in a very short block. If a line of text is too long across the screen, I tend to read serially across very slow. Because of the speed of my eyes. So I can perhaps, emulate the block reading style, by applied serial processing. Because I have to look at each word in series, it is easier for me if the word wrap ends after a few words instead of after 15. Even then, I tend to skip a lot of descriptions because they don’t interest me. I make up for what I miss, through memory ability. When rereading a book, I will find that I was a bit hasty and missed some concepts or words or descriptions. So I have to rely upon memory, so that I can look back and think on the words that I have read, while taking in new words.
I cannot divide a block of text into 4 sections, and then start reading all 4 at the same time. That would not work, because I have to piece the words together serially. One at a time, from beginning to end. I can skip a few words and a few spots in place, but not that far. The more I remember, the farther I can skip. The more words I remember, the less time I take to read them. Because I can remember what word it is from how it sounds like and how it is written, from looking at the first 3 letters, and then just glancing to see how long it is, that memory ability allows me to emulate some aspects of speed reading.
Combined with additional memory pneumonics and defocusing the eyes to take in more than one line of text at a time, gives me a very poor imitation of hyper speed reading. I cannot run it at full speed without extreme mental fatigue. So I clock it down.
Of course, large, hard to spell, or very unfamiliar words slow me down while reading. Both mentally, as well as visual memory wise.
It’s like foreign language translators. Sometimes they have to wait until the end of the sentence for the verb, to be able to translate it into an English sentence. I don’t know the exact mechanics of how Left handed people read though, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t limited by being in series.
Maybe being left handed just doesn’t matter very much. I’m sure if you examined the billions of right handed people you would find plenty of artists, creative types, multi-taskers. I’ve known bad left handed musicians. I’ve known good right handed ones. This whole handedness thing strikes me as being similar to astrology. One can always find a group of left handed people that share a certain trait and then use that trait to draw conclusions about left-handedness. However, if you studied every single lefty out of the hundreds of millions in the world I’m not sure it would be so easy to categorize them. Furthermore, if being left-handed was really a kind of evolutionary advantage then wouldn’t everyone be left handed? Who knows.
I’m pretty sure all the non-creative left handed folks were men.
Lefties have a reaction time advantage:
http://biology.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm#Hands
I knew there was something “sinister” about you all…