Stricken with panic, these words escaped my lips yesterday after Graham nodded at Isla, who was scooping spoonfuls of creamy soup into her mouth with the greatest of ease.....using her left hand. Her left hand!
I'm a righty, born and raised in the midst of 5 other rightys--how on earth am I going to know how to raise a lefty!? The whole idea feels foreign to me.
Graham says it's easy. "The first step is to stop calling her 'a lefty.' The next step is to buy her a left-handed pair of scissors and then the rest is all the same."
"Left-handed scissors?" I cry. This only exposes my naivety. "They make left-handed scissors? What is the difference?!" Then it dawns on me and I feel ashamed. Just one piece of evidence illustrating my lack of proper training in this matter.
My mind begins racing. How will I teach her to write? What if she decides to play softball? Or golf? I won't be able to show her what to do since she'll be facing the opposite direction. Oh and how will I comfort her when she comes home from school after writing on a white board for the first time only to discover her perfect letters were erased only moments after they were formed!?
Leftys (excuse me!....Left-Handed People), please understand that I say this mostly in jest. But if God indeed has blessed me with a left-handed child, I could (obviously!) use some enlightening. I don't know how to raise a lefty.
Her Great Grandpa Croier was a southpaw!
ReplyDeleteHey Kels- we've been noticing for months that Maddie favors her left hand too. I can't say that it has caused me quite as much "angst" as you :), but I think we might be in the same boat. We'll raise our left-handed girls together! :) Martha is left-handed on our side, so it is in the blood (whether that makes any difference whatsoever).
ReplyDeleteLefty here... My opinion - don't buy left handed scissors - they're lame and I cut way better with my right hand.. and what are you going to do when there's no lefty scissors to be found and she's stuck trying to figure out the right handed ones in front of friends? For me...being a lefty was no big deal. Well, there was that one day at Bellevue Community College that I had my feet hooked around my desk and leaned over to grab a swedish fish from Kim and fell to the ground with right-handed desk attached. I always blamed it on the desk. The left handed ones were always at the very back and I was sitting in the front row...yes, I was in front of the whole class when I bit it. One of my embarrassing moments in life. ;-) But really, lefties are cool. :)
ReplyDeleteKels, You make me laugh!
ReplyDeleteThis made me giggle. :) I'm left handed, and I LOVE it! I feel so unique, but honestly, it doesn't really impact my life much...okay, it really does bite to have ink smeared on my pinky practically all the time from writing (I suggest dry safe pens...they dry instantly!)...and, I will admit, a LOT of things are made without thinking of lefties at all. My mom tried to teach me how to knit. Fail. The first time I picked up a guitar, I held it the wrong way. And, it is true that the mind works a different way. I'm with Shauna on the left-handed scissors though. Apparently someone didn't really think much when they created those, because they don't really work! There are so many little idiosyncrasies with being a lefty, and it's fun to discover them all and to learn how to live with it. I'm sure there are certain things that have bothered me in life and have been a challenge to overcome because of being a lefty, but I can't think of any right now (probably because it's 1 a.m.)...and I have definitely uttered the words, "Ugh...why do I have to live in a right handed world???" Micah has had to learn that I like to sit on the LEFT of him when eating, otherwise our elbows and arms bump into each other. It's just little stuff like that. HAHA! It's so fun though! :) Embrace it! :)
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