Left Handers Day 2014

When I was a child, I was not ever forced to switch my dominant hand, but I was given approximately zero help in school, leading to an incorrect pencil/pen grip and long-lasting psychological problems. I also have a special place reserved in a deep fiery pit of hatred strong dislike for contoured right handed scissors. Because what I really wanted was to gouge out a chunk of my index finger while I hack ineffectively at lines that I can’t see so that I can glue together a picture of a pond habitat. Which is to say, I am left handed.

The Left Handers Day website covers information about the holiday and Anything Left Handed has more information about being left handed, including a selection of left-handed pens and pencils. If they weren’t at least five dollars per pen, I would probably hunt one down just for the heck of it. Yes, I am aware that five dollars isn’t that much, but I like to buy ten cent ballpoint pens because I’m cheap. Actually, most liquid ink pens smudge too much and pencil has too much friction and gets all over my hand. When I was in elementary school, sometimes when eating lunch after not washing my hands, I would get graphite marks on my sandwich. Tasty, and I’m sure all the added bacteria was also great for my health.

There are plenty of other places online with lists of famous left-handed people and things like that, so instead I’m going to discuss something about handedness and hockey that I unearthed in the middle of the last hockey season and one of my favorite Bible stories.

Sometime during hockey season, I was looking for information about a game on the opposing school’s website and noticed that they listed their players’ handedness on their roster. Rather than seeing a list of R’s like on baseball rosters, there were (very) roughly equal numbers of hockey players who were playing right and left handed. It turns out that in America it’s slightly more common for hockey players to be taught to have their dominant/stronger hand on the bottom of the stick while in Canada and probably the rest of the world it’s taught that the dominant hand should be on the top of the stick. While the former tends to have more power, the latter has more control. Either way, there’s about a 60-40 split between players shooting right and left handed. Which way the handedness leans depends on the country.

One of my favorite Bible stories was shared fairly recently, but in honor of Left Handers Day, I’ll share it again. It’s about Ehud, the left-handed judge. Ehud is raised up by God to help the people of Israel, who are being oppressed by the king of Moab, Eglon. One day, Ehud goes to the king’s palace with tribute for Eglon. After presenting the tribute, he tells the king that he has a secret message for him. He is only checked for weapons on his left side and is allowed to meet privately with the king. At that point, Ehud pulls out his dagger from the right side and stabs the king in the stomach. The king’s entrails fall out and Ehud goes home, where he gathers the Israelites to go kill ten thousand Moabites. Then there are eighty years of peace.

Moral of the story: Don’t trust left-handed people bearing secret messages Celebrate Left Handers Day every August 13th.