Every family seems to have one. The uncle who signs birthday cards with his left hand. The cousin who somehow manages to write across a page without smearing half the ink.
The child at school was trying to fit into one of those little classroom desks that were clearly designed by somebody who had never actually met a left-handed person.
Most of us notice these things, but have we ever stopped and wondered why some people are left-handed in the first place?
It sounds like the sort of thing science should have solved years ago. After all, scientists can estimate the age of the universe and read the instructions hidden inside our DNA.
Ask them why your aunt insists on signing Eid cards with her left hand, though, and the answer is usually, "Well... we have a few theories." There is something oddly reassuring about that. Perhaps the universe likes to keep a few easy-looking questions unsolved.
Many researchers now think we have been asking the wrong question. Why focus on the ten per cent who are left-handed? Why not ask why the other 90 per cent of people seem to prefer the right hand? The pattern is remarkably consistent wherever scientists look.
Different countries, different cultures, different periods of history, roughly one person in ten is left-handed. If it were a serious disadvantage, you might expect evolution to have quietly removed it by now. If it gave people a huge advantage, perhaps we would all be left-handed. Instead, nature seems perfectly happy with its mysterious ten per cent.
So where does it come from? The obvious answer is genetics, and that is partly true. Left-handedness often runs in families, but scientists have spent years looking for a single 'left-handed gene' and have come up empty-handed.
Some jokes really do write themselves. The current idea is that many different genes each play a small part, together with events that happen before birth.
In fact, studies suggest that some unborn babies already seem to prefer one thumb over the other, and that preference often matches the hand they favour later in life. None of us actually decides to become left-handed.
Then there is the brain, because whenever scientists cannot explain something, the brain usually wanders into the conversation sooner or later. We have probably all heard that left-handed people simply have the opposite kind of brain from everyone else. It is a nice, tidy explanation.
Unfortunately, nature rarely bothers with tidy explanations. Most left-handed people process language mainly in the left side of the brain, just like everybody else. The differences seem to be much more subtle, and scientists are still trying to work out exactly what they mean.
Some researchers think being different may even have its advantages. Imagine you are a tennis player. Nearly everybody you practise against is right-handed because nearly everybody is right-handed. Then you arrive for an important match and discover your opponent is left-handed. Suddenly, the angles feel unfamiliar, and you start wondering whether somebody changed the rules while you were in the changing room.
Studies have found that left-handed people appear more often than expected in sports such as tennis, boxing, and fencing. It does not mean left-handers are secretly superhuman. It may simply mean that being less common occasionally works in your favour.
Of course, for left-handed people themselves, everyday life can provide enough adventure without worrying about scientific theories. Ask one about the small frustrations of daily life, and there is a good chance the conversation will eventually arrive at scissors.
Somehow it always comes back to scissors. Add classroom desks, spiral notebooks, and can openers to the list, and it quickly becomes clear that the world was largely designed by right-handed people for other right-handed people.
Perhaps that is what makes this whole subject so fascinating. It starts with something so ordinary that we barely notice it. Somebody picks up a spoon with the left hand instead of the right, and nobody gives it a second thought.
Then you start asking questions, and before long, you have wandered into genetics, evolution, and the workings of the human brain.
Maybe that is the real charm of left-handedness. It is not because left-handed people are mysterious or unusual. It is because something so ordinary, something we see every day without thinking about it, can still quietly refuse to explain itself. In a world where we like to believe we have almost everything figured out, it is rather comforting to discover that nature still keeps a few little secrets.
One of them may be sitting at your dinner table tonight, happily holding a fork in the other hand and wondering what all the fuss is about.
DR KHALFAN AL HARRASI
The author is an academic and researcher
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