In case you missed it, for the past 42 years, August 13 has been International Left-Handers Day. Why should anyone care? For starters, according to ChatGPT approximately ten percent of all Americans are left-handed.
Pity the poor southpaw. Consider the every day items not made for lefties: scissors, writing with slow-drying ink (the hand tends to smear it), can openers, guitars, cameras (the shutter button is always on the right), many tools, dinner tables (don’t bump elbows), spiral notebooks, etc.
If you’re looking for confusion, the history of Major League Baseball regularly features players who played out of their natural handedness, a phenomenon that is seen occasionally in other sports but is a regular occurrence on the diamond. Go back more than a century to the present day and you’re likely to see players who bat one way and throw the other. Ask them to sign their autograph and there’s no telling which hand would hold the pen.
Being a lefty doesn’t appear to be a hinderance. Left-handed people who overcame their struggles to achieve great things include: Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, Bill Gates, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Babe Ruth and Oprah Winfrey. As well as the long list of left-handed presidents: James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Although being left-handed is nothing to laugh about, that doesn’t stop some people from trying. In a full-page ad in USA Today on April 1,1998, Burger King detailed a program whereby left-handed people could order Whoppers with its condiments rotated 180 degrees, creating a left-handed taste. Then in 2015, Cottonelle announced that a special line of toilet paper (er, sorry, bathroom tissue) designed especially for lefties would be available on April 1, 2015.
According to journalist Tod Perry, “The greatest lefty-rights advocate of our times (is Simpsons character) Ned Flanders.”
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