Left-handedness is certainly an everyday phenomenon. We all probably know somebody who writes with their left hand or possibly do so ourselves. But how often do we pause to think about what might be the cause of such a preference or how, something as natural as left-handedness, might be understood in societies other than our own?
In his book, The Puzzle of Left-handedness, Rik Smits addresses some of the enigmas, rumours and paradoxes surrounding the left-handed among us. Rik begins by telling us about his background and how he came to approach writing a book about left-handedness.
Rik Smits: Well I started out as a linguist, first in universities and then, when universities couldn’t afford me any more, I went in for writing because I always liked to tell people, who had no access to everything that we knew and were finding out, what was going on in the heads of these people and why that was interesting in a way that they would listen and could understand. That’s how it all began and I have been doing that ever since although not only on language but always on things that have vague connections to language.
JB: Were here to talk about left handedness. Are you you left-handed yourself?
RS: Yes I am.
JB: Have you always had an interest in this? When did you start thinking about what it meant?
RS: Well not at all at first. You are confronted with it when you are young, when you go to school and you learn to write, that is the first time it really becomes an issue. But I was lucky. I had an understanding teacher and she just said you put your paper like that and you sit on that side of your neighbour and that's it. And then I forgot about it for a large part of my life until a publisher said will you read this manuscript from America, he said it's about left-handedness and asked if it was suitable for translation. And it was horrible. So I told him and he said, well, maybe you should write a book about it and I said, well ,I don't know if there’s anything to talk about. I went in to libraries and within three days time I had a pile of 300 books and articles to work with so I said, 'yes, I'll do the book'.
JB: Could you explain, in maybe two sentences, what left-handedness actually is?
RS: Usually it is not what you think. People normally think you write with your left hand and you do other things with your left, probably you are left-footed and it is about dexterity, about doing difficult things. But actually it is about doing very mundane things. You find very stong tendencies for left or right in things like striking a match. So, if you look at violinists they always play right-handedly. But look at what they do, the really difficult stuff they all do with their left arm. And most of them are right-handed. That is the arm that does the fingering and makes the notes and the right arm just bows away.
People always think you have right-handers and left-handers but actually it is a sort of sliding scale where you find a sort of line and at both ends you find clusters. Towards the right end and, a ten time smaller cluster but still a sizable cluster, towards the left hand. But it is not at the end it is a bit towards the centre. So you find relatively few people who do everything left-handedly or everything right-handedly.
I don't know why you would, but is it a skill that you can learn and develop the preference for. You can become proficient with either hand. This is testified by hundreds of thousands of  people who have lost the use of their preferred arm for one reason or another. Take Nelson for instance, and there are many, many, many more. People have accidents and they just have to learn to cope with their other hand. Some have to change their writing hand and you will see that the handwriting comes back - the same letters, the same forms. It looks the same which is really crazy because the way you form the letters is definitely different. This doesn't happen with everybody but it happens with some at least.

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