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Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers?
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Liz the Squeak Date: 08 Jan 01 - 06:07 PM I'm completely left sided - I kick left footed (ok, so I fall over on both.....), I have diminished hearing in my right ear, and my right eye is the weaker of the two... when I put a rife to my shoulder, with my left hand on the trigger, it needs to be dead straight, and even then I end up with my head at 90 degrees to its' usual angle, squinting out of my left eye..... Went to the opticians today... the prescription for the left eye is weaker than last time, but the one for the right eye is almost 30% stronger..... My cheque signing hand went into spasm when I found out the price - guess who is having her old frames remodelled!! LTS |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: The Walrus at work Date: 08 Jan 01 - 02:13 PM I seem to fall into the same class as a number of the group here, I write and carry out "precision" work with my left hand, but, like everyone else here I live in a right hand dominant world and so adapted to using much of the equipment (optical microscopes, SEMs, some test machines etc). I shoot a rifle right handed (because that's how it was drummed into me) but I used to shoot pistol (when it was legal here)left handed and when I used to fence (many, many years ago) I could use either hand equally badly. Instruments, I tend to play right handed because that's how I was taught. A question for those in this thread, how do you write? Down the page holding the pen "normally" ?(whatever that means)Or do you hold the paper square and write "crab"?(wrist heavily bent, pen pointing towards you). I'm a "downer". Good luck Walrus (who is thinking of learning Arabic, Hebrew or Urdu, just to have an advantage over the others in writing write to left) |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: mousethief Date: 08 Jan 01 - 01:22 PM I am not now, nor have I ever been, left-handed. Alex |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 08 Jan 01 - 01:21 PM "The only things I do left handed are what you tend to do sitting down - writing and eating. Everything else I do right handed. Musical instruments, throw, bat, etc." So what happens if to sit down when you play the instrument, Wesley? " (And what's your lead-hand when you are changing nappies?)
Thinking it I can see how with a harp you'd want to be using your thumb to play the bass strings, and that's carry over to the way you'd string a guitar etc, and give us the conventional lay-out. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: GUEST,Matt_R (at ECU) Date: 08 Jan 01 - 10:33 AM Paganini used to play his violin upside-down and backwards. Handel? Well...he was notorious for breaking them over his knee! |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: RichM Date: 08 Jan 01 - 10:24 AM I am a rightie, but do some things a la lefty: american/canadian style football, hockey, golf... "ambi-pedrous?"
My aunt learned to play Quebecois music on her dad's fiddle. He was left handed, she was right handed. So she learned to play right handed and backwards. It was always a treat to see her with her elbow held high pumping away on the treble strings. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Wesley S Date: 08 Jan 01 - 09:40 AM Someone once called me a "sitting" left-handed person. The only things I do left handed are what you tend to do sitting down - writing and eating. Everything else I do right handed. Musical instruments, throw, bat, ect. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson Date: 08 Jan 01 - 08:45 AM Another lefthanded person who plays right handed. I like the Django analogy-- once you have learned how, even the slightest bit, it's too hard to unlearn & start over. Gervase-- you may have to explain the Douglas Bader reference to most people. I have a friend (involuntarily retired ex-cop) who lost both his legs and mentioned Bader to him; Jim had never heard of him. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: bill\sables Date: 08 Jan 01 - 08:39 AM Are there any Bluegrass banjo players among you lefties. If so where do you get left handed thumb picks. I had a student a few years ago who was learning guitar left handed and I had to watch her fingers in a mirror to check they were ok but I had a hell of a job trying to get left handed thumb picks for her, I eventually got three picks from a friend of mine but don't know where he got them and I would like to have as few in stock in case anyone wants one. Cheers Bill |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Gervase Date: 08 Jan 01 - 06:02 AM I', right-handed, but play the whistle left-handed - which is a pain in the arse (as it were). I picked up a three-hole tabo pipe when I was about 14 and started playing around with it and, because the left hand plays down the bottom of the instrument, I kept it there when I started playing the whistle - and there it's remained. All of which probably explains why I am to whistle playing what Douglas Bader was to tap-dancing, and whcy the first time I tried to play a recorder I thought "What pillock put the holes in the wrong position?" The trouble with shooting right-handed with a dominant left eye is that you end up with a pug-ugly gun. Instead of a gentle cast in the stock, you end up with something that looks like a serpent. Interestingly, a lot of the London gunsmiths made some strange looking pieces in the years following the Great War because so many of their customers had come back minus the odd arm or eye. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Liz the Squeak Date: 07 Jan 01 - 07:01 PM Leonardo Da Vinci was a leftie, so was Michelangelo, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and I think Picasso. I'm proud to be one of the elite..... Lenny would write what everyone else thought was code, but was really "mirror" writing - something I've never had any trouble with at all, in fact, when I learned to write, I automatically wrote in mirror and when stressed out, I still do...... reading upside down has never been a problem either.... I'm third generation, my daughter fourth gen, and I'll take umbrage at anyone who tries to change her to right handedness. I had a music teacher who swore he couldn't read my writing because I was left handed. He forced me to write right handed and was stunned when I produced a piece of writing with all the hallmarks of a drunken inky spider. Serve him right! I'd love one of those lefthanded corkscrews though, I've unscrewed so many from their handles...... Isn't there a castle in Scotland where all the spiral staircases go the opposite way to most others? The Laird was a leftie, so had the spirals put that way because he could fight and hold on, whereas his usually righty opponents would be in trouble..... Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's little church) in Barcelona has the same... the turrets are mirror image, so that going up is right handed, cross the bridge in the middle, and going down is left handed.... LTS |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Gary T Date: 07 Jan 01 - 06:50 PM Sounds like a case for a left-handed bolt-action rifle, Greyeyes (yes, they are made). Ebbie, I believe the answer to your question is yes. Certain things are learnt in one side of the brain, but the info is often transeferred to the other side internally. There have been studies on some aspects of this. I'm afraid I don't recall any of the details. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Greyeyes Date: 07 Jan 01 - 06:05 PM Well I play nothing with either hand, but I'm confident that if I did, both hands would be equally incompetent. I bat right handed, bowl and throw left handed, am completely left footed, write right handed (completely illegibly), shoot left eyed from my left shoulder, but left eyed and right handed with hand guns. As a cook I chop right handed (and cut myself frequently), stir and whisk right handed, though I can switch mid egg white, toss pancakes right handed, grind pepper and salt left handed. Sorcha, I have known people who use a rifle left eyed from their right shoulder, you can only do it practically on a range, but the couple of people I've seen do it were exceptional shots. They were using bolt action rifles, which are a bugger to reload left handed. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Ebbie Date: 07 Jan 01 - 05:50 PM Since it is said that ambidextrous persons who suffer a stroke have a better chance of not losing their ability to speak, does that mean that one could improve one's chances if one trains oneself to use either or both hands? Did you understand that question?? Ebbie |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Melani Date: 07 Jan 01 - 05:39 PM I was originally left-handed, as was my father, but my mother retrained me as a toddler to use my right hand. This explains why I now do many things backwards. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Gary T Date: 07 Jan 01 - 04:27 PM I understand that the guitar evolved from the harp, which is significant in how the guitar is laid out and oriented. The implication is that if someone had started out to design a guitar from scratch, sans precedent, it may well have been laid out and/or held differently. I'm sorry I don't know the particulars of just how this harp heritage makes a difference. Perhaps someone else can elaborate. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sarah2 Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:32 PM McGrath, Happens my very-best-friend-in-the-whole-world is a Mirror Twin. She's right-handed, left-brained, right-footed. The twin is just the opposite. She says that's how it works, mostly. A left-handed corkscrew? Obviously, I need one of those (hic!) -- one does weary of eating all that cork. Sarah |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: MMario Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:24 PM right and left handedness is both cultural and genetic. A study I saw in college showed that there is a definate genetic bias for favored hand, but this can be overridden by culteral preferences to a great extant and also that "handedness" occurs in a graduated series - from ambidextrous (where neither hand is preferred) to strongly favoured. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Peter Kasin Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:14 PM I'm left-handed, and play fiddle right-handed. I use the mouse right-handed, too, providing a convenient cowardly excuse for all my typos! |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:11 PM That's the question I was asking - so the brains stay wired up the same way, even if the hands aren't?
I'm sure I heard somewhere that with identical twins sometimes its that way, and sometimes it's the other way, according to qwhich way the egg made it's first division -so if you get identical twins, and one is right handed, they are also going to have opposite hemispheres wired up to do the talking and the figuring and so forth. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sarah2 Date: 07 Jan 01 - 12:46 PM McGrath, old (?) quote: "Only left-handed people are in their right mind." This comes from the scientific indications that people who are left-handed are "right-brained" -- which is where creativity is supposedly centered; right-handed people mostly use the left side of the brain, and therefore can add and subtract and remember where the light switch is when they enter a dark room. So I guess we need each other. Sarah |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07 Jan 01 - 12:33 PM I very much doubt if it's cultural. Of course attitudes to it are -I imagine there are cultures where left-handed is regarded as threatening (which have usages like "sinister") and probably others where it's seen as some kind of advantage. Which it can be in fighting and probably for some other things. But my understanding is that it's pretty clear that whether you are left-handed or right-handed is genetically determined.
One thing I've always been unclear about is how this all ties up with the brain hemispheres - I can't remmebr how it goes, but one hemisphere is specialised on some things and the other on other things.
Well, if you're left-handed is that reversed - or does it stay the same , but you are stronger on the stuff that the appropriate brain hemisphere specialises in. Or does this vary, with some left=handers being wired up to a left-handed brain, and some not?
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sarah2 Date: 07 Jan 01 - 11:00 AM Okay, McGrath, a return to the original question is fair, but don't we need to determine: 1)when did people became predominantly right-handed {archeologists tell us folks were once mostly left-handed but an evil gene became dominant); and 2) is the instrument in question really designed for right-handed people or a derivitive of something originally left-handed -- or perhaps even invented by a left-handed person? Let's take the guitar, a fairly universal instrument today: Anyone know its history in full? I'd assume it's a derivitive instrument, but from what? What's the ratio of left- right-handedness in the culture of its origin? And is this why me da called me his "little throwback"? Sarah
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: campfire Date: 07 Jan 01 - 10:47 AM I have a friend who plays leftie but uses a "right-stringed" guitar. He says learned that way so he can play anybody's guitar if he doesn't happen to have his with him. I have to admit its hard to follow him if he doesn't call out the chords. By the time my feeble brain "tranposes" his hand position, he's on to the next chord already. campfire |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Peter T. Date: 07 Jan 01 - 10:38 AM Hey, what a great secret clique! I suspected that a high proportion of the beauties around here were lefties; about the geniuses, well, you can't win them all. I am clumsy with both hands, but my mother always said that I was spacey because neither side of my brain would take responsibility. yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Date: 07 Jan 01 - 08:08 AM I sat and watched Bill Staines last summer at an arts festival. I studied his fingering and picking for awhile before I realized why it looked weird- he plays his guitar upside-down and backwards! I didn't get a chance to ask him about it. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07 Jan 01 - 08:05 AM I repeat my question - what about people who play instruments designed for the other sort of handedness, but back to front or whatever you call it?
So if you are left-handed, you are using the right habd to do the fingering on a stringed instrument, and the left hand to pluck the strings - but the bass string is nearer your feet and the treble strings are nearer your head. And so forth.
As for playing with whatver for you is the wrong hand the example I always think of that illustrates how fixed we are is Django Reinhardt. He loses half his fingering hand in a fire, but he still keeps playing using that hand for the fingering, even though it means developing a competely different aproach to playing, instead of changing hands and just holding a plectrum in his damaged hand. Which is what anyone who doesn't play an instrument would assume he would have done. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Date: 07 Jan 01 - 07:53 AM I'm a member of the clique, too! And I play guitar and (beginning) fiddle "right"-handed. My left hand is happy with fingering, but my right hand is all over the place. Hey, any one here have trouble driving a standard-transmission car? I've killed many a clutch in my day. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Dave Wynn Date: 07 Jan 01 - 07:35 AM Scorcha...you sure she can't use the can opener the way I can't use the clothes iron? ;-) |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Quincy Date: 07 Jan 01 - 06:41 AM Me and Jimi Henrix never had any problems with our left hands!!! Yvonne |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sorcha Date: 07 Jan 01 - 02:02 AM This is really strange, how many lefties are string players......or musicians in general.
I can hammer, eat,almost anything except write and play fiddle leftie. I am definitely Right Ambi; I am also "left eyed"....
Daughter Kate is just the opposite. Mostly Leftie, but Right Eyed. She can do everything right handed except write......and the big problem around here is not scissors but the damn manual can opener. She just can't use it at all. (I know kat will kill me for this, but.......try getting a rifle up to your right shoulder and using the scope left eyed........doesn't work real well. Just as well I don't want to kill things anymore!) |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Gary T Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:25 AM I always figured if there were a real overall advantage to most people in doing guitar chording/fingering with their dominant hand, then all the righties would want lefty guitars. Most righties, in my experience, wouldn't even consider playing a lefty instrument. Lefties vary in how strongly, and often in what areas, they want to do things left-handed (I have a pretty strong sense of dominance--just holding a guitar in the right-handed manner feels extremely awkward, so I never considered playing right-handed). Factor in our having to do a fair amount of right-handed things in this world, and the scarcity of left-handed instruments, and it's no wonder that a number of us play guitar right-handed. |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: campfire Date: 07 Jan 01 - 01:02 AM Finally a clique I can be in!!! Left-handed, play rightie; use that as an excuse for not being very good (LOL) campfire |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Crazy Eddie Date: 07 Jan 01 - 12:35 AM Scissors? HAH! Easy Peasy! If you really want to have fun get yourself a left-handed corkscrew. Then ask a "dextrous" person to open the wine! Left-handed can-openers are good too. So, when do we get to take over the world, and make everyone do things OUR WAY? HA HA HA HA HA (Sound of Evil Manic laughter) |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 07 Jan 01 - 12:07 AM Sarah: Fair enough; though the majority of instruments were certainly designed with the assumption of right, not left-handedness. Lefthanders do seem more dextrous (if you'll excuse the term) with their less-favoured hand than do righthanders, generally because circumstances force them to be. Mind you, there isn't much I can't do with my left hand (except as described below!), though I've never taken the time to learn to write or draw accurately with it, having been lucky enough not to have needed to. 'Spaw: Really just that I always seemed to find myself having to cross hands in what was, for me, an uncomfortable fashion. I was trying to play melody with my right hand and bass with my left -as you'd do on a keyboard- but having the bass on the right was, for me, the opposite of what seemed like a natural setup; it would have felt more natural to me, at the time, to have started with the lowest note at bottom left and the highest at top right, as in most stringed instruments. That's the best I can manage by way of explanation, and I never became an accomplished enough player to get beyond that, though I still intend to get the thing set up and working again one day... Malcolm |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Bill D Date: 07 Jan 01 - 12:04 AM there are places who specialize in product for leftys...here are a couple http://www.lefthandpublishing.com/ not for me, though...I am SO right-handed I can barely pick my nose with my left hand |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Jon Freeman Date: 06 Jan 01 - 11:40 PM I have no problem holding the flat pick with my right hand. I did when I first started but I soon got over that although I have no idea what I changed to achieve it - it just happened. I still have problems with slipping picks when y hands are hot and sweaty - my remedy is to roughen the surface with a bit of sandpaper such as a match box but there are many others. Jon |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sarah2 Date: 06 Jan 01 - 11:34 PM Can't agree, Malcolm: I've always found it easy to do picking patterns, bowing, etc. with my right hand, where a delicate touch is needed, and the walking around and forcing my fingers into reaches on the fretboard or into new chord positions with my left hand. I don't play an instrument that requires bowing any longer, since I lost custody of the upright, but I don't remember having trouble with the bow. I'll give you one point, though: I still can't hold onto a flat pick with my right hand; it just flies off across the room after three or four licks. So I finger pick of necessity. Sarah |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: catspaw49 Date: 06 Jan 01 - 10:53 PM Malcolm, I miss your reasoning on the HD.........I'm a rightie and I find no problem with the right side bass rail. As a matter of fact, since I have greater "accuracy" (for lack of a better word) with my right, its easier to grab a course over there as needed without looking. In playing harmonies using the bass rail, I suppose there is a danger of having a harder strike with my right hand, but I really have never found that to be a problem. Can you explain a little more about what you meant? Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: aussiebloke Date: 06 Jan 01 - 10:40 PM Sinister indeed... I believe that I may be the proud owner (and player) of the worlds only left-handed lagerphone-bow. The 'Men-Of-God' - at the Christian Brothers College I attended years ago offered to convert me from a happy enough lefty to a 'God-Fearing-Righty' when I attended their Thankfully, my parents declined their offer, the Brothers were left to curse and mutter amongst themselves and failed on both counts - leaving me without a potential stutter or worse, and with sufficient coordination intact to become a percussionist, if other 'catters will accept that word for 'he-who-bangs-and-shakes-things'. I am not ambimousterous - I resort to driving a right placed mouse with my left hand using a crossover technique. Cheers aussiebloke - shameless player of bodhràn in public... |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 06 Jan 01 - 10:37 PM A lot of people think that stringed instruments are inherently left-handed because, to begin with, the difficult bit to learn is the (lefthand) fingering. In fact, the really complicated part belongs to the right-hand, whether picking, bowing, or whatever, as most people eventually discover. Although my mother and brother are lefthanded, I've always been predominantly righthanded, like my father -it seems to average out like that in families that have both. I began to learn to play the guitar once, but that was tuned upside-down for a left-hander; at the time it seemed quite natural, but I don't think I could do it now. I've always suspected that the hammered dulcimer ought to be set up with the bass in the lower left rather than right; as it stands, it does seem like an instrument for lefties. Malcolm |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: kimmers Date: 06 Jan 01 - 10:05 PM I write and eat leftie, play instruments rightie, and throw (if you can call it that) rightie. I bat leftie and use a pool cue leftie, and used to fence leftie. I use my laptop's touch-pad with my right hand. This means I can eat or write with one hand and surf with the other. This is a dangerous thing. I noticed a *lot* of lefties in med school. Coincidence? |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: okthen Date: 06 Jan 01 - 08:44 PM This whole thread seems very SINESTER to me cheers bill |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Sourdough Date: 06 Jan 01 - 08:44 PM I play guitar clumsily right handed. Does that qualify me? Also, some of my best freiends are Lefties. Sourdough |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: GUEST,Sarah Date: 06 Jan 01 - 08:29 PM Ebbie, obviously you are a person of great discernment. But we're just playing it down so as not to be too obvious. We want to leave the pods around surreptitiously. Sarah (no longer a guest so I can be certain of qualifying for the Secret Clique.) |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: catspaw49 Date: 06 Jan 01 - 08:28 PM This is obviously a Communist conspiracy and I will be reporting you to Col. MAV and The Conservative Cavalry who will deal with such treasonous behavior in a tried and true American way.........they will don their hoods and bedsheets and hang your leftist asses from a tree in front of a fiery cross!!!! Well, either that or they'll spend the time trying to grab their ass with either hand.................. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Ebbie Date: 06 Jan 01 - 08:19 PM I should not say this in front of all you lefties- but I have always suspected that left-handed people are smarter? more intuitive? cleverer? than righties. I don't really know where I got the idea. (Certainly not from observation.*BG*) For the record, I am decidedly right handed. Ebbie |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Ribbit Date: 06 Jan 01 - 07:45 PM We're all born left-handed, people become right-handed when they commit their first sin. Maybe we should have a Mattscot? *BG* runnin and duckin in Maine Thom the leftie |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: Ebbie Date: 06 Jan 01 - 07:39 PM I have both a left hand and a right hand- does that count? Eb |
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Subject: RE: Secret Clique:How Many LeftHanded MCers? From: GUEST,Sarah Date: 06 Jan 01 - 06:59 PM Elizabeth Cotton learned to play the guitar upside down and backwards, because she was using her older brother's guitar without his permission and she didn't think there'd be time to restring it twice. Matt, as long as you don't get weird and tie yourself up, I don't think it matters. Sarah |
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