On Being Left Handed

People who are left handed make up about 10 percent of the population. Left handed people are more prone to have allergies, insomnia, migraines and a whole host of other things more than people who are right handers. Maybe it's from living with us right handed people. Left handed people are three times more likely than right handed people to become alcoholics and scientists speculate that it is because the right hemisphere of the brain has a lower tolerance for alcohol then the left side of the brain. People who are left handed use the right side of the brain most while right handed people use the left side of the brain most. And if you are ambidextrous you probably use both sides of your brain about the same amount.

Around ten percent of Americans are left-handed, and of those, there are twice as many lefty males as females. Cats and parrots have general tendencies toward their left paws and claw; rats and monkeys tend to be right-pawed. A study of ultrasound pictures of 270 fetuses (from 1 month to 9 months) revealed that 92% sucked their right thumb while in the womb.

Left handed people tend to be more likely to be on the extreme ends of the intelligence scale then right handed people. Left handed people tend to have a higher portions of mentally retarded people and they also have a higher tendency to be people with high IQ"S. Left handed people who have higher I.Q.s tend to have an I.Q. of over 140.

In the late l890's Left handed people got the nickname of southpaw. Because most baseball fields were laid out were the pitcher is facing west and the batter facing east, so the sun wouldn't be the batter's eyes. When a left handed pitcher threw a ball it was with his arm that was toward the south so left handed people started to be called southpaws.

Some Native American tribes strapped their children's left arms to there cradleboard and this caused most infants to become right handed. In Many cultures children who were laft handed were forced to use there right hands instead.

In some cultures it is impolite to touch your food with your left hand for the simple reason that you use your right hand for clean tasks such as eating and the left hand for unclean tasks such as wiping yourself after going to the bathroom. You use your right hand to touch yourself above the waist and the left hand is used to touch yourself below the waist.

Christians believe that when judgement day arrives according to custom God blesses the saved with his right hand and casts out all the sinners out of Heaven with his left hand.

The next time you see a coat of arms check to see if it has a strip running diagonally across it. Most strips are called bends and they run from the top left to the bottom right. A strip or bend that runs in the

opposite direction is a left-handed bend or a sinister bend.

Through out history it seems the left handed people have gotten a bad rap but times have changed and even though change can be very slow it is changeing things are getting better. Whether you are left-handed or right-handed we all have our problems and our problems are all different. It is how we handle our problems that matters.