Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Hand goes left if brain speaks right!

minus
plus

How do you feel when you are accused of using the wrong hand?! You see your colleagues, friends or siblings doing the same thing that you are doing, but each is using a different hand! Perhaps you are like none of them or someone could be standing on your shoes too, so you get less frustrated! Either it is only you the left-handed or someone else is there, others might look at you abnormally differently! Though you are perfectly performing a similar task that is usually done with the right hand. Left-handers fault is their brain is cross-wired; their right side controls the left side of the body and vice versa.


Conceivably, it is just people’s stereotype that makes using a left hand in a world dominated by right-handers is somehow wrong! Throughout ages, left-handers have been facing various difficulties in different cultures. Some have even experienced discrimination in their communities due to superstitions, while some have been badly treated to an extent to be punished to cure their left-handedness. In some cultures, left-handers are referred to as someone who uses the wrong hand and associated with weakness, impurity or evil.


In fact, humans are one of the few creatures to show a preference between using the left and right hand. Most creatures, even chimpanzees, the closest creatures in the animal kingdom show a 50-50 split when it comes to which hand, foot or paw they use the most. However, left-handed animals include kangaroos, which tend to favour their left paw for things like eating. Also, studies have shown that 90 per cent of parrots use their left foot to pick things up.


Luckily, such misconceptions and challenges of left-handers have changed. A few might only consider the left-handers in their midst as evil or using the wrong hand. Yet, left-handers have to tolerate some inconveniences of a right-handed world, at home, work or public. If you are a left-hander, you realise the difficulty of writing on a desk that only works for a righthander. You endure the amount of time you spend adjusting and trying to find the perfect angle. In such scenario, writing form left to right is by itself a challenge for a left-hander.


Scissors, bottle openers, kitchen equipment and even basic household tools are mostly designed for right-handed people. Computer keyboards and mouses are also right-handers-friendly. Actually, experts pretend that at least 10 per cent of the world’s population are left-handed, and that is a good number of people to be considered when manufacturing and designing tools and other stuff. Despite this, left-handers often struggle to perform basic daily tasks in a world designed for right-handers.


Scientists are not yet sure about why a person develops left-handedness. Rather it is attributed to a child will be left-handed if one parent is a lefty too. An Irish psychologist studied several hundred baby scans, when the baby in the womb was sucking its thumb. It showed that about 90 per cent of babies sucked their right thumb and at 12-years-old almost all of those right thumb suckers were right-handed. Whereas three-quarters of the left thumb suckers became left-handed. Thus, it seems that genetics play a key role in having a right or left-handed child.


Probably, right-handers might wonder what it is like to see the world from a “left-handed” point of view? Therefore, they could explore that world for a day and mark the International Left-handers Day, which shows the uniqueness and differences of the left handers. This day was first observed in 1976 by Dean R Campbell, founder of the Left-handers International Day. The day urges designers, corporates and governments to be more left-handed-friendly and adapt objects for left-handers. The left-handed are precious; they take places, which are inconvenient for others. Hats off to all left-handed, who have mastered using their left hand in a right-handed world.


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon