Right-Handed or Left-Handed?

[Ben]

I'm sure we've had one of these polls sometime in the history of APS, but I noticed lately a lot of current members mentioning that they are left-handed (I am). I'm wondering how much higher current APS stats are than global stats, which seem to run 10-12%.

Oh, I added ambidextrous since I know someone will complain if I don't. 

[RocketMan]

You should add bidextrous as that is a thing, as well.  I am bidextrous, not ambidextrous.  I do some things left-handed (eating and writing) and everything else right-handed.  I should note that although I can eat right-handed, I usually do so left-handed.  I cannot write right-handed at all.

[RoadKingLarry]

I'm right handed and left eye dominant.
I have very early memories of being (some times rather forcibly) "corrected" to use my right hand so I may have been part of the last of those that were forced to right handedness.

[RocketMan]

I'm right handed and left eye dominant.
I have very early memories of being (some times rather forcibly) "corrected" to use my right hand so I may have been part of the last of those that were forced to right handedness.

Folks tried to force me to write right-handed when I started grade school.  Told them to bugger off and never changed.  To my young mind it just didn't seem logical to write that way.  I didn't figure out how my hand was going to smear my writing until later.  Oh, well.

[K Frame]

Left handed, right eye dominant.

I bat and golf right handed, shoot rifles/shotguns right handed, shoot handguns equally well from either hand.

Precision work/tool use always done with the left hand.

[HeroHog]

I'm fairly ambidextrous, thanks to all those years as a mechanic and as a drummer, until it comes to writing or throwing (data point: I also suck throwing Right-handed as well, just not quite as bad).

[MechAg94]

Left handed.  Can write badly right handed.  Can't throw at all right handed.  Learned to shoot right handed and still do.  I can shoot okay left handed, but don't do it very often.  It is awkward doing all the controls with the wrong hand.

[Northwoods]

Grandpa was right handed and married a lefty.  All 4 kids were right handed.  Dad married a lefty, both my sister and I are right handed.  I married a lefty, all 4 of my kids are right handed.  I’ll know my son has found his true love when he brings home a left handed girl.

[grampster]

 

Left handed, right eye dominant.

I bat and golf right handed, shoot rifles/shotguns right handed, shoot handguns equally well from either hand.

Precision work/tool use always done with the left hand.

I'm a lefty, but I bat and golf right handed, throw left handed, shoot long guns left handed, hand guns equally well with both hands.  Precision work with tools can be ambidextrous, but sometimes it depends on what I'm doing.  Phone use I use either ear, (which I think happened when we still use phone booths and they were made for righties), depending on the circumstance.  I use my right hand for the computer mouse.

[lee n. field]

I'm right handed and left eye dominant.
I have very early memories of being (some times rather forcibly) "corrected" to use my right hand so I may have been part of the last of those that were forced to right handedness.

Interesting.  I didn't know they ever did that in America.  That was thing you heard about happening in enemy conformist communist dystopias.

[K Frame]

Interesting.  I didn't know they ever did that in America.  That was thing you heard about happening in enemy conformist communist dystopias.

When my Mom was a kid in elementary school in the late 1930s/early 1940s she had a teacher who would try to "correct" Mom with a ruler. When my Grandfather heard about that, he visited the school and made it clear to the teacher and administration that his daughter would NOT be "corrected" and that she would continue to be left handed.

My Grandfather, who was also left handed, could be QUITE scary when he wanted, or needed, to be.

That ended the matter.


Odd fact about left handed in my Mom's side of the family....

One person in each generation going back at least 5 generations was left handed. Mom was the only woman.

[Northwoods]

Interesting.  I didn't know they ever did that in America.  That was thing you heard about happening in enemy conformist communist dystopias.

The nuns that ran the school my mom went to (rural Oregon in the 50’s) would whack the knuckles of kids writing with their left hand.

[RoadKingLarry]

It was still a thing into the late '60s depending on where you were.

[dogmush]

It was still a thing in the mid 80s when my teacher forced me to right right handed.

I'm sinister handed, but writing (messily) is the one thing I do with my right hand. Never got past that one teacher's enforcement.

[Ben]

It was still a thing into the late '60s depending on where you were.

It was a thing in CA then as well. I seem to vaguely remember the teachers tried it with me in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I can't remember if they gave up or the policy changed.

[K Frame]

I'm really glad that no one ever tried to "correct" me in elementary school.

Based on what my Mom went through when she was a kid I have no doubt she would have gone absolute nuclear apocalypse on them.

[Perd Hapley]

Like all patriotic, God-fearing Americans, I am right-handed: it's the right way to live.

And I am the best blood type, A+. What a model am I!

[K Frame]

I'm left handed, AB+, CMV-

That puts me in something like 0.0004% of the entire population of the United States.

[BobR]

I am left handed but like most, if not all left handers there are many things I do right handed and am ambidextrous in a lot of things. When I was growing up many things I was taught such as sports was by right handers so most of them I do right handed. The important things like writing, using eating utensils, shooting and wiping my ass I do left handed. Most power tools I also use left handed which puts me at a higher risk of catastrophic death according to some studies.

bob

[French G.]

Left handed and was very much so as a child. Had no strength or control in the right to the point something like clipping my nails was impossible when it came time to do the left hand.

In 1983 my third grade teacher was an eighty year old crank who would have cured me if all those youngsters in administration let her. Hated left handers and gave me no help. To this day my writing is crap.

My dad was almost as bad, he had me feed the dogs and gave me cans of alpo and a military pocket knife. Those can openers do not work left handed.

Golf and baseball I learned right handed. Zero idea how to do it left handed.

For a good long while I was a right handed welder. In weld school I was struggling and finally had to switch to running rod left handed because I couldn’t control the right fingers finely enough to get the rod to the where and when I needed. For a while I couldn’t weld left but now it is my primary hand but I switch all day depending on where I need things to be. Most coworkers have zero weak hand abilities.

When I shot weekly IDPA we often had time to shoot the match several times with different guns. I would bring a right handed holster and do it. I was always about two classes below left handed me but in general I roast people if a stage specified weak hand.

[AZRedhawk44]

I'm grip handed.

[zxcvbob]

Left-handed, but like BobR said can do a lot of things equally well (or almost equal) with my right. 

My brother and all my first cousins are also lefties.  My parents and aunts and uncles were not.  It's a little weird.

[grampster]

Interesting.  I didn't know they ever did that in America.  That was thing you heard about happening in enemy conformist communist dystopias.

Hah.  Apparently you were not edumacated by the Sisters of Mercy Who Had Absolutely No Mercy Whatsoever.

[Northwoods]

Hah.  Apparently you were not edumacated by the Sisters of Mercy Who Had Absolutely No Mercy Whatsoever.

The Catholic Church had a bias against left handedness (literally viewed them as servants of Satan) which translated into the nuns trying to beat it out of all kids in their schools.  Areas with little or no Catholic influence probably were better about letting kids use whatever hand they wanted for writing and such.

[Lennyjoe]

Right handed but shoot left handed since I’m left eye dominant.