What’s It Like To Be… is a fortnightly column where New Zealanders from all walks of life share first-hand experiences. On Tuesday, the world marked the 48th International Left Handers Day, which was started to celebrate the uniqueness and differences of left-handed individuals. In the past, many left-handed people were chastised and punished while the world remains set up for the right-handed. Here, Máire Burns talks to Paulette Crowley about being left-handed.
My eldest brother was left-handed, and he was very artistic and sporty. When I came along as the fifth child and was also left-handed, my mother didn’t ever see it as a problem. She loved diversity and my left-handedness was totally celebrated until I went to school.
It was Ireland in the mid-1960s, and I went to a Catholic school. I was only four when I started writing. I remember the nuns tied my left hand behind my back. It was horrific.
They certainly didn’t approve of kids being left-handed. There was definitely some religious thing against people being left-handed, maybe it was old-school beliefs, or because of something in the Bible.
Lucky for me, I had a mum who didn’t put up with any of their bullshit. She marched down to the school, saying what they were doing to me was unacceptable. Did they not understand what it meant to be left-handed and right-brained, she asked. I have the clearest memory of her lecturing the nuns, “Did you not know that Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed?”
Mum had a path down to the nuns about stuff that went down during the years; she was a pretty strong woman.
The next time I remember that being left-handed was an issue was at one of my first jobs as a teenager. I might have been about 14 and got a job in the local seafood restaurant on the front of house.
The owner used to go off his head because I kept setting the table as a left-handed person. And so I was demoted to doing the washing up. Then I realised it was way more fun in the kitchen. It was way more interesting, and I couldn’t have cared less.
I’ll tell you one other funny thing about being a leftie. Growing up in Ireland, dancing was a thing. And I was so bad. I didn’t realise that if you’re left-handed, you’re also left-footed. I found this out when I was suddenly able to dance with a left-handed person. It felt fabulous! To this day, if I dance with someone right-handed, I feel so awkward.
I remember an amazing day in London full of lefties. Outside where I was working was a crowd of people having a left-handed party. The place was just full of them, and they were giving out left-handed scissors. It was hilarious.
That brings me to secateurs. These are hard for left-handed people. I just thought I wasn’t very good at using them, that I wasn’t very strong. So, the first time I discovered left-handed secateurs was fantastic. It actually made a big difference.
Knitting, now that was a disaster. To learn how to knit, a left-handed person would have to sit opposite a right-handed person. I’m a desperately failed knitter, probably because of that. I recently bought a knitting kit just to try it out again, but I’ve run out of wool and the wool was supposed to do for making a hat. What I’ve knitted isn’t a hat, so I’ve done something terribly wrong. I might make something for the dog with what I’ve done.
When you’re left-handed, you’re very aware of left-handedness. Every time, if I’m looking at a film, I will notice if it’s a left-handed actor. Other leftie people tell me this as well. It’s because we’re a minority, so we identify with each other.
But the world doesn’t see us.
I heard of one left-handed guy who had worked in his office for years. He broke his right arm, but his office mates had never noticed he was left-handed. They all said, “Oh, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.” And he just said, “Fine, I won’t.” Good on him.
Both my children are lefties, which I was delighted by. At one point, we bought a fridge, and we said to my husband, “You need to put that door on the left for us.”
But my kids never really had a problem with being left-handed other than when my daughter was learning to play the guitar. Left-handed guitars are obviously way more expensive because there’s not as big a demand for them.
Left-handers have not always had it easy. There are some derogatory terms for being left-handed like cack-handed – I think cack is a term for faeces. It also means clumsy. And the Latin for left is sinistra, and it also means evil, coming from the word sinister.
But I’ve always loved the Irish word Ciotóg. I loved that we had a name, but then I found out that it also meant clumsy. I was like, “Oh, feck off.”
I don’t know where it all came from originally. Maybe there was some amazing left-handed woman who others decided was a witch? God, the labels that people give you …
