In all sense of the expression, I’ve always been a lefty in a righty’s world. Growing up in the red state of Georgia, my politics has never aligned with the status-quo of my state, which led to some lively and thought-provoking conversations in high school, but I was a “lefty” even before I knew what the terms “social democracy” and “liberalism” meant. Indeed, I’ve always felt like an alien in social situations, both at home and outside. I couldn’t readily explain why I felt so different from others especially in my teens and early twenties, but I always knew that I was just different. I zigged when others zagged, I crissed when others crossed. Music, interests, hobbies, it wasn’t until college and ironically studying psychology that I began to find my tribe, but it wasn’t until much later that I found out the true extent of my leftiness…
Growing up, I’ve always had a preference for using my left hand in most dexterity tasks and sports not giving it a second thought. Yeah, I would occasionally get spiteful comments such as, “Hey, that looks so weird!” And “Why are you using your left hand?!” I paid little attention to these comments and cast them aside as casually as the leaves of a tree sway with the wind. “Whatever,” I often thought to myself. But it wasn’t whatever, those comments started to accumulate and replay in my mind’s internal tape recorder, wondering why I kept hearing those comments, wondering why my handwriting was always so sloppy… then it clicked some years later, I suddenly remembered, it came rushing back to me, like a tsunami’s second wave. “I’m actually left-handed.” I recalled trying to use my dominant hand in my formative years to write only to be reprimanded by all of the adults around me. Parents and teachers included. Now my young brain understood why my parents were doing it, they were from Nigeria and local customs held that using your left hand was frowned upon and not to be done, lest you wanted to offend, and be promptly scolded. But coming from those outside this West African custom too? Like my teachers? I couldn’t grasp my head around this predicament, but what was a child to do?
Fast-forward a couple of years again, firmly out of my formative years, and into the series of quarter-life crises that have been my mid-twenties. I stumbled across several articles detailing the effects of being left-handed, but being forced to write with your right-hand, and then it all clicked, it all made sense, I was finally… vindicated. Research suggested that forcing a left-hand dominant child into using his/her right-hand resulted in mental, emotional, and especially, learning issues. All issues that I struggled with growing up, without an inkling as to why. I was always a studious and curious kid, which led me to being placed into the gifted program at the elementary school I attended. However, I remember the day like it just occurred, an average afternoon in the life of third grade A.J. I was asked to solve a routine math problem on the board, tasked to execute two things I hated: doing math and being the center of attention. The sensations and perceptions felt that day remain just as vivid to me almost twenty years later. The feeling of my brain effectively being frozen, I couldn’t solve the simple arithmetic problem math suddenly became a foreign language to me, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, I went from being in the prestigious gifted program to being placed in the individual education program or IEP, the students who needed additional attention. My whole world felt like it was being swept from underneath me.
I went from not being able to understand why as a child I struggled with: bad handwriting, issues concentrating, stuttering, nail-biting, bed-wetting and overall shyness. To developing a better sense of my identity and used that as motivation to reclaim a piece of myself, something that was perhaps thought of as trivial to those schoolteachers and my parents, but to me, it was everything. At the age of twenty-five, I forced myself to maintain a journal for the first time in my life. Detailing all those private thoughts that lurk in the shadow realms of my mind, bringing it out into the physical realm, and onto paper. The only difference this time being, I was using my true hand, I was using my left hand. Though this decision was very empowering, the sheer ugliness of my penmanship appeared almost resided me to give up on this fool-hardy mission and just use the hand I was trained with, even though my right hand still couldn’t produce the type of handwriting that would make even an amateur calligrapher proud, despite two decades worth of practice.
I didn’t give up though, I stayed the course and quickly began to see my left-hand penmanship improve steadily to a point where it felt more natural (as it should’ve) to write with my left hand as opposed to my right. Feelings of exultation were a given, here I was being my full authentic self, reclaiming that which was stolen from me. As a person who studied the neurosciences, I was fully aware of the detriments of using your non-dominant hand to write with and the deliberate act of reverting back to my natural handedness felt like a big fuck-you, to all those complicit in the damage affected to the development of my young brain. Never again should a kid, or anyone for that matter have to question if a certain symptom they experienced or are experiencing is attributed to typical age-related issues or the ramifications of having to switch their dominant hand.
Though it often stems from good intentions as the world truly is set up to cater to the righties of the world, this isn’t a valid excuse to alter the wiring of one’s brain. I understood all the associated Nigerian cultural aspects of left-handedness being associated with evil and unluckiness, but no longer can we allow “culture” or society to dictate the way nature has formed us. I don’t say all of this to admonish those who had a hand (pun intended :) In my early education, but to serve as a firm reminder of the importance of letting people just be themselves. So many of our problems as a species come from others trying to play a passive, or even active role in the lives of others where sometimes a gentle hand or no hands at all (and another one! 😉 ) would be the appropriate decision. For something as innocent as nudging a child to use the socially acceptable hand, could have massive consequences on said child’s cognitive development, affecting their lives forever.
09/14/21 Addition: I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom about it though. Due to this upbringing, I am now fully ambidextrous, which is a great help when I cut my hair, or when I multi-task!
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