¶ … Lefties for a Day!
The most obvious distinction between being right vs. left-handed that I found was (unsurprisingly) with writing. I noticed that writing with a pen was much more difficult given that the pen was designed to respond to pressure from the right not the left. Writing in spiral notebooks and with loose-leaf folders also was more painful. Sitting in a desk designed for a righty was challenging when there were no available desks for left-handed people. Eventually, I resorted to just putting my notebook in my lap.
However, writing was not quite as uncomfortable as I anticipated because I am used to typing on a computer. Over the years, I have become fairly adept at using both hands to type. Typing is in many was a gross motor skill, versus the fine motor skill of printing or writing in cursive. If I were a younger student being 'graded' on my penmanship, I would have found writing a far greater challenge.
Some things were very difficult to do because my non-dominant hand was very weak. I found clipping my fingernails, pulling down a shade, or even opening up a door to be taxing on my left hand. Some activities I deliberately postponed because they would be too difficult for me, such as wrapping gifts (which would require extensive cutting and writing cards that had to 'look good'). Of course, an actual lefty would not have this luxury.
Many people who are left-handed learn to cope extremely well and have even stronger left hands than the dominant hands of right-handed people. That is one of the reasons why there are so many great left-handed athletes and musicians (skills that require considerable manual dexterity). They must have at least a reasonably strong right hand to cope with a right-handed world and thus end up being more 'balanced' as a result. Instead, I tended to feel more clumsy and awkward because the disadvantage I was experiencing was relatively recent.
Most of my left-handed friends possess a degree of ambidextrousness that I as a righty do not. They can open jars, write, and accomplish fine motor skills with their right hand -- they simply prefer to use their left and using the right feels and looks slightly more unnatural. Still, the difficulties I experienced highlight why left-handed students tend to have poorer penmanship and often if they are forced to write on a piece of unlined paper the words tend to 'creep' to the right.
Of course, it is possible that early on in their school careers, lefties feel uncomfortable before they have learned to cope with being left-dominant in a right-dominant world. For example, I had an older relative…
