Showing posts with label ambidextrous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambidextrous. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

The Handiness of being Unique by Konnie Enos


I reached my destination and grabbed my purse, placing the straps on my shoulder. Then I got my water bottle and my keys. All these things were on my right side so that is where they were when I got out of my car.
I walked into the building and up to a table where we were to sign in and receive a raffle ticket. Most people would empty their right hand to sign in.
Me?
My left side and conveniently empty hand was nearest the table. “Oh I’ll just use my left.”
The lady passing out raffle tickets said, “Well it’s legible anyway.”
“Of course. I’m ambi.”
And that’s not the first time in my life I’ve had to sign left-handed. Once I was in the ER and they had just stuck an IV in my right hand when one of the staff members asked me for a signature.
“Can my husband do it?”
“No.”
“Oh well, okay.” I sighed the paper left handed.
“This is perfectly legible.”
“I know. I’m ambi.”
I’ve heard of people who were ambidextrous, including one president, but I’ve never met any others.
Okay, technically, I’m the mirror of right handed Bonnie.
To this day I can remember our first grade teacher telling us to pick up whatever we were to be writing or drawing with and then getting on my case because I hadn’t picked up my implement up in the right hand.
I couldn’t understand how my hand wasn’t the correct hand to use. Was I supposed to use someone else’s hand?
That right and left business confused me for years.
Just try getting directions from me.
I’m actually pretty good at figuring my way around while my husband can get lost just turning a corner. I’d give my husband directions, as in turn right, or left, which ever direction I was thinking was the correct way, at the corner so he’d go to turn the way I said.
“That’s the wrong direction!”
“That’s the way you said to turn!”
“Well I said the wrong way, turn the other direction.”
Just pointing didn’t work because he had to keep his eyes on the road so we developed our own code. This-a-way means right (front passengers are on the right side in the car). That-a-way means left. Our kids grew up with this so they will give directions using these terms.
Our teacher did get my writing with my right hand but it wasn’t neat or very legible until I put a lot of practice into filling reams notebooks, over several years, just to get it neat enough to read.
Then out of curiosity I tried my left hand.
No practice at all and you could barely tell the difference.
Since then I’ve had people tell me a number of interesting things like I handle scissors backwards.
Uh? Oh, I guess I do. But handling them the correct way is awkward for me. I suppose if I’d ever been handed left handed scissors and been allowed to use them with my left hand I wouldn’t use them upside down.
I’ve also been told I use handheld can openers backwards, and in fact this is the reason I could never successfully use those tiny military openers. They relied on you turning one way to twist it around the can and the opposite way to get it off the can. I can only twist the way to get it off the can, not to open the can.
I’m a lefty in a right handed world.
I even had a doctor tell my I’m naturally left handed. He was a specialist in carpal tunnel syndrome and was doing nerve conductivity tests on both my wrists. He asked me three times if I was right or left handed.
Since I generally use my right hand I told him right, but when he kept asking I finally said that I was ambi.
Then he said, “Generally speaking the hand with most nerve damage is your dominate hand. For you it’s your left, that’s why I kept asking which hand was dominate.”
It was after this declaration that Bonnie and I even learned such a thing as mirror twins existed and what they were.
Funny learning about something and realizing you fit in that category. Then I found out my primary care physician is also a mirror twin. She’s the right handed twin.
But I think the most unusual thing of all is two of my five children are also ambidextrous. My youngest daughter and my youngest son.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.