Left, Left, Left ...

While watching three art videos on YouTube recently, I noticed that all the artists were left-handed. Being a southpaw myself, I thought it noteworthy, and it made me wonder how many artists throughout history were also left-handed. So off to the internet I went.

It turns out there are a whole bunch -- and I'm talking the really good ones: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Klee, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, MC Escher, Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Diego Velasquez, and Pablo Picasso. And that's not all of them by a long shot.

Though scientific studies indicate that overall, lefties are no more creative than righties, there is evidence to show that lefties gravitate to art and music more than righties do. Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin were all left-handed. So too are/were Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Collins, BB King, Mark Knopfler, Sylvia Tyson, David Bowie, and Kurt Cobain.

Other famous left-handers include 8 US. presidents, notably Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barak Obama. Other world leaders and entrepreneurs like Julius Caesar, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Alan Turing, Prince William, King Charles, and Alexander, the Great are/were also left-handed. Scientists, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Marie Curie were lefties too. So are celebrities Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Lady Gaga, Richard Dreyfuss, Jennifer Lawrences, and Jerry Seinfeld. Left-handed athletes of note include Babe Ruth, Ken Griffey Jr., Raphael Nadal, Martina Navratilova, Lionel Messi, Pele, David Robinson, Tony Gwynn, Bobby Orr, Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, Phil Mickelson, and Wayne Gretsky. In sports involving hand-eye coordination, the proportion of left-handed elite athletes is notably higher in baseball, boxing, swimming, tennis, fencing, and table tennis. A 2006 study published in the journal Neuropsychology by scientists at the Australian National University, measured the reaction time of left- and right-handed people, and found “extreme left-handed” individuals were 43 milliseconds faster at spotting matching letters. They think more quickly. (Google)

I can't help wondering if 43 milliseconds is worth measuring. The point is, there are a lot of us lefties out there doing great things. In fact, probably more than you thought. One of every 10 males are lefties, while females come in a bit lower at one out of 8. Apparently there are a number of factors which determine if someone becomes left-handed. It could be genetic, developmental, or environmental, but no matter the cause, left-handers use their brains differently than right-handers do. Google says that "since different brain regions control opposite sides of the body, left-handers use their brain in a more balanced way. This makes them excel in fields requiring big-picture thinking, like science, the arts, and leadership."

That's pretty impressive, considering it's a right-handed world. Things right-handed people never even think about are a challenge for us lefties. Take reading -- you do it left to right and the pages are turned right to left, because that's natural for right-handed people. When I was a kid, I read the newspaper back to front, because that's what felt natural for me. It kind of messed up some of the news stories if they were a continuation from a previous page, but I survived. We lefties want to read lines of print right to left, but the words don't generally make much sense that way.

And don't even get me started on writing. The contortions lefties go through to print and write is ridiculous. Again, if you're right-handed, you probably have never noticed this, but when you write, you pull the pen across the page. We lefties have to push it, but that feels too weird, so most lefties contort their arms so that they are indeed pulling the pen.  (See the photo above.) The result is an unsightly backhand -- print tilted the wrong way and generally smudged. (Fountain pens are a nightmare for lefties.)

You've likely heard stories of left-handed children being forced to write with their right hands to avoid this. How cruel is that! Just try writing with your other hand, and you'll understand what I'm talking about. Lucky for me, my grade one teacher didn't try to convert me. Instead she showed me how to tilt my paper in the opposite direction so that I could pull the pen instead of having to push it or alternatively, write backhand. Consequently, I have perfectly legible handwriting.

Here are some other examples of right-handed favouritism in the world:

Note the indentations on the right of the keyboard tray -- intended for a pen, tacks, eraser --conveniently located for right-handed people

• telephones when they had cords; the receiver was meant to be held in the left hand, leaving the right hand free to dial and write. Left-handers had to pull the cord across their bodies to their right hand in order to dial and write with their left, and they inevitably twisted the cord and hung the receiver up the wrong way around.

• wristwatches when they had a winding stem. You couldn't wear it on your left wrist because it got in the way and was uncomfortable when writing, but if you wore it on your right wrist, you had to take it off to wind the stem.

• scissors. There are left-handed scissors, but most homes just have the right-handed ones, so you learned to apply different pressure in order to use them.

• computer mouse and the tray it sits on. It can be altered to be used with the left hand, but most of us learned to use it right-handed before we found out it could be changed.

• standard gear shift vehicles unless you live in England and Australia

• paper cutters. As an art teacher, I used that device a lot and holding the cutting arm up with my shoulder while I adjusted the paper on the bed was always a scary proposition.

• miter and circular saws

• the pictures and cute sayings on cups and mugs are on the wrong side of the cup

• the pour spouts on ladles

• shortage of left-handed desks in lecture halls

• serrated knives and single bevel knives

• can openers

• the stem switch on a table lamp

• folding a sheet or moving anything requiring two people if the other person is right-handed.

Again -- the list is endless. The one advantage I've noticed about being left-handed is

eating. I hold the fork in my left hand and the knife in my right. So after I cut my food, I stab it with my fork and I'm good to go. Many right-handers, put their knife down and transfer the fork to their right hand. (I shall never starve.)

It was once believed that right-handed people lived on average 9 years longer than those who were left-handed, but that theory has since been debunked. However, researchers have found that left-handers are more than five times as likely to die in industrial and auto accidents — perhaps because the machinery is designed for right-handers. The jury is still out on the relationship between medical conditions and handedness. Some studies indicate lefties are more susceptible to some medical conditions like dyslexia, but on the other hand, seem better able to recover from things such as strokes.

Left handed people were once thought to be the work of the devil. (I'm sure my husband still feels that way about me sometimes.) We were even thought to be witches, and we all know how that turned out. Thankfully those prejudices have gone the way of the dodo bird, though I still have people say to me things like, "You have such nice handwriting for a leftie," or "You're such a good artist, but you're left-handed!"

Yes, and now you know that the two can go together. We lefties even have an annual day to celebrate ourselves -- Left-Handed Day every August 13th. (I wonder whose idea it was to choose lucky #13.)

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my circuitous segue into announcing that I currently have some artwork in the Sea and Cedar Virtual Exhibition, sponsored by the Vancouver Island Regional Library. (Right-handers have work in it too.) Check it out.

Thanks for reading. Pop by again next month.