Wow, am I relieved!

Wow am I relieved.  My interest was caught by an article on Yahoo! entitled "A Very Sinister Tale."  For those of us who are left handed - yes Larry and I are BOTH left handed - sinister has a very different meaning than to the public at large who view it as a word indicating lurking danger or great harm or evil.  But we know the original meaning of sinister was from the left hand side. [from Latin sinister on the left-hand side.]

So when this article popped up, I had to read it. Turns out two psychologists from the late eighties came out with a study that stated left handed people lived 8 - 9 years less than right handed people on average. The two psychologists did a study of 2000 people who had died recently and asked their families if the deceased were left or right handed. The lefties lost so they deduced that we died younger. Rather a small study, don't you think? And apparently they sort of overlooked the fact that we lefties weren't allowed to be left handed for a very long time. So some of those righties were probably left handed. After all we were, well, sinister!


I don't know about you lefties out there, but when I went to kindergarten the first thing my evil teacher did was to tie my left hand behind my back so I could learn to write right handed. My mom quickly put a stop to that, standing up for my rights to be left handed if that's what my brain wanted. After all, lefties are in their right brain. That, plus being named Patrice not Patricia gave me a lot to fight for going through school. Yes I'm left handed, no I'm NOT Patricia Phoner, I'm Patrice Faynor. (My last name was Foehner and for many uninitiated teachers, it was too incomprehensible to pronounce - except phonetically.)


We lefties are also stronger of mind if not of body. We've had to overcome a lot of obstacles to stay true to our brain. Scissors are made right handed, writing was designed for righties - how many of you lefties out there turn your left hand upside down to write? or find yourself with ink all over your left side of the palm because your hand passes over the ink right after it's been put on a written page? Three ring binders are designed for righties as well. They get to write away from the rings, we have to struggle with our left palm bumping up against those rings. And then how many of us purposely seek out the left hand corner of a table when dining so we don't bonk elbows with the righties sitting next to us?


But at least this study is being debunked. I am relieved! I can now go on without worrying that my right handed friends are going to last a lot longer than I do. And I can revel in my own uniquenesss. Only 10 -11 % of us are chosen to be SINISTER.