Hands

08 May 2014


I recently bought some preloved cast iron pans, at a bargain price, in a local charity shop.  I absolutely love them and cannot believe I haven't tried this type of pan before.  They are great for children to use as they are nearly impossible to knock over sat on a hob, so they don't require being held whilst stirring something that is not easy to do when you are little.  They have a handy spout to make pouring the contents easier, if you are right handed.

Would you consider yourself to be right handed to left handed?  I never know how to answer this question.  Usually it is the hand you write with, in my case my right, that drives the answer and for most people this is the hand that they do everything else with, not me.  I might write right handed and use a knife, scissors and needles but everything else I do left handed.  So pouring the contents of a pan with your left hand means tipping it the 'wrong' way and spilling most of what you are trying to pour, I get the same result trying to do it with my right hand........

We had a telephone when I was a child that was mounted on the wall, it had a long curly cable connecting the handset to the part on the wall.  My parents always knew when I had been on the phone as, despite having a left handed brother he never used the phone, you could tell from how the handset had been out down whether it was done so by the left or right hand.  I never had that problem that my colleagues had at work of having to hold your phone between you ear and shoulder to free up your hand to write.

I can write very legibly and fairly fast with my left hand, if I broke my right hand I would be ok but I am not planning on doing that anytime soon.  I have always wondered whether I should have been a left handed writer like my brother.  It is possible as a parent to influence which hand your child writes with and I have often wondered, along with my father, whether this is what happened to me especially as I have a left handed sibling.  As a mother myself I have been very conscious of not trying to influence my own children.  My eldest showed a dominance for his right hand from around the age of five, my youngest who will turn five at the end of this month is still not showing a dominance.  I  thought long and hard about sending my youngest to school or to home educate, despite my eldest being home educated, but if there is one reason that I am glad I didn't I would pick this.  If she had been sent to school she is most likely to have become a right handed writer as we live in a world dominated by right handed people, but she has been given the time to discover this at her own pace.

But perhaps I am just ambidextrous, I was always going to do things with both hands, if you google ambidextrous test you can find out for yourself what you you are.  I am hopeless at telling my left from my right I have to really think about and even then usually get it wrong.  On the rare occasions I have set foot in an exercise class I am the one crashing in to the person next to them.  I don't have a problem with this but it's funny how so many people do and furthermore don't get it or think I can learn it or really should have done by now.  Nope it isn't going to happen, I am never going to know my left from my right its part of who I am along with the long list of things I can competently do left handed.

What about you?  Hopeless with right and left?  Which hand dominates?

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Those are my and the children's hands in the picture.  My children do not have enormous hands, mine are just small!

6 comments:

  1. Lovely shot! I am right handed but I throw a ball, pour and pick up the telephone with my left! I have no problems with my left or right and I am fairly coordinated on a dance floor! Sara is left handed and she had such an awkward time at school when she was little. teaching her to knit was a dificult one and I was at a loss as how to help, she sorted that herself! She taught herself to crochet and the knitting just naturally followed! Her fiance Tom is also left handed and she recently taught him to knit!

    Lovely post x

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  2. That's an interesting post. My middle boy is left-footed (at football) but right-handed, although I think he could equally have been left-handed. I'm hopeless with my left hand, a definite right-handed person.

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  3. I agree with CJ, a very interesting post. Both my parents are lefties but both my brother and I are righties, go figure! Actually my mother is more of an ambidextrous like yourself but writes and cuts with her left hand (though her writing is not so bad with her right hand, either). What a beautiful photo of your hands! I find looking at hands completely fascinating as I find they are so expressive. xo

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  4. I am right handed and so are my girls. I couldn't write with my left hand to save my life! My little boy uses both hands interchangeably at the moment so I don't know how he will turn out. He certainly uses his left hand far more than the girls did at his age - I never doubted that they would be right handed but we have wondered whether Joby will turn out to be a left hander.

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  5. I'm right handed. I use the telephone with my left hand but nothing else. There's no one in my family who's left handed.

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  6. This is so interesting! I am right handed, as is my husband and the kids. But many of my friends - and their kids - are lefties and it made me realise what a right handed world we live in. Everything - scissors, knives, where the mouse mat is positioned - is always geared up for right handed people.

    Lovely photo too. x

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