Goofy

I’ve previously written about the colorblind side of my blog but never the lefthanded aspect. Being lefthanded often begins with a fright. For me, the first time I noticed this perculiar attribute was when I began to write. Very soon after, my relatives began to call me MOT. I was writing my name backwards. Was it evil or just awkward?

Much later, while spending a lot of time in predominately Muslim countries, I learned that it was indeed awkward when I noticed everyone looking at me with disgust; I was eating with the very hand that all the “righties” used to “clean themselves”. I switched hands and was thankful for the invention of toilet paper.

There are approximately 32 million, left-handed Americans. Approximately one out of ten. Extrapolated onto the world population, this means that there are over 660,000,000 left handers out there. As 27% of the world’s population is Muslim, there are 175M people out there eating with the hand they clean themselves with or eating awkwardly with their un-natural hand.

By Any Other Name

• The Arabic word for lefthanded is aysar; in association with the devil.
• The French word is gauche or "awkward"
• In Italian it's sinistra from the Latin word for evil and where it is also used to describe car accidents.

We even get no respect from snowboarders where a left-footed stance is known as "Goofy".

Famous Lefty’s

• Bach -German Composer
• Billy the Kid -American Wild West outlaw and gun slinger
• Napoleon Bonaparte -French Emperor
• Michelangelo Bounarroti -Italian Renaissance artist
• Lenny Bruce -American Comedian
• George Bush Sr. -Famous muralist on the floor of the Bagdad Hotel
• Charlie Chaplin -American Silent screen star
• Winston Churchill -British Prime Minister
• William J (Bill) Clinton -American Prez
• Kurtis Edward Cobain -Dead singer
• Tom Cruise -American Scientologist
• Leonardo da Vinci -Italy Renaissance artist & inventor
• Albert Einstein -German/American Scientist
• M C Escher -Netherland Graphic artist, whose image I used above