Left-Handed

created: 2024.06.11. 06:27 · modified: 2024.06.12. 07:54 ·  · license

This post was automatically translated and has not yet been reviewed by me. Please read with discretion.

I'm left-handed.

Last year, over a meal with friends from my university tennis club, the conversation somehow led me to mention that I'm left-handed. The friend beside me immediately responded, “Huh? No way!” Why would I lie about that, lol? But I don't play tennis left-handed, and left-handed people aren't that common, so I could see why they were surprised.

There are no official statistics, but various surveys put the proportion of left-handed people in Korea at around 5%. Worldwide, about 10% of adults are said to be left-handed. The unusually low figure in Korea is probably not innate but the result of people being taught to use their right hand. Supporting this idea, a Gallup Korea survey found that left-handedness was more common among younger generations, who grew up in a relatively more permissive social climate. A survey by Dongshin University that included ambidexterity as an option also found that about 8% of respondents were ambidextrous.

I, too, was born left-handed but became ambidextrous through practice. As the table below shows, the activities I mainly use each hand for are split fairly evenly. The clearest dividing line is, unsurprisingly, whether someone taught me how to do the activity. My parents deliberately taught me to write and eat with my right hand, and I learned without much resistance. I think that was an excellent choice. I can't speak for everything else, but doing those two things left-handed comes with plenty of inconveniences. Even setting aside how other people might look at you (which hardly seems to be an issue anymore), there are practical problems: awkward arm and wrist angles, smeared ink, and bumping into the person next to you.

There are also a few things I do right-handed without having been taught, like hitting a billiard ball.

*I take a hanger off the rack with my right hand and put the clothes on it with my left. As a result, when I put the hanger back, the clothes face left. I noticed that in clothing stores, this often left the clothes I'd tried on hanging the opposite way from the others, so I figured it must be a left-handed habit. But it seems not all left-handed people do this. Which means some right-handed people probably hang clothes the same way I do.

In high school, I wrote so much while studying that my right hand got a lot of practice. Eventually, even drawing seemed more comfortable with my right hand, and for a while I wondered if I'd converted entirely to right-handedness. It's true that I still reach for my right hand when drawing things that resemble writing or involve lots of straight lines. But my left hand is still more comfortable for drawings that call for fluid strokes, like sketching or brushwork. And it's only the major activities that are evenly divided between my hands. I do all sorts of little tasks that are hard to list with my left hand.

I can write with my left hand, too. But my handwriting is terrible and I'm very slow, so it's more a matter of “not being entirely unable to write.” I assumed anyone could do at least that much, but it turns out that many right-handed people can't even apply pressure to a pen with their left hand. Around middle school, I tried practicing left-handed writing on purpose, thinking I could build on that relative advantage and become fully ambidextrous. I soon gave up. It was too frustrating that my left hand couldn't do something my right hand could so easily. More than a decade of accumulated practice is no small thing.

Left-handed people used to face outright persecution; even now, they're sometimes pressured to switch, and the everyday inconveniences are real. Still, I like being left-handed. It makes me feel a little special, maybe? Claims that left-handed people are more intelligent or creative, or that many great historical figures were left-handed, seem to have been debunked by numerous studies. But using my left hand does sometimes give me a different perspective on things. For example, when I flip through a book, I hold it with my right hand and turn the pages with my left, so I often end up seeing its contents in reverse order.

Meanwhile, there's one area where being left-handed offers a clear advantage: sports. In sports where you face an opponent, left-handers can present attack patterns their opponents rarely encounter. Unfortunately, because I learned most sports from right-handed family members or instructors, I haven't benefited from that advantage at all. I swing rackets, bats, and sticks with my right hand. People even say that throwing right-handed and batting left-handed is usually the best combination in baseball, but I throw with my left hand and bat with my right.

When I had just joined the tennis club in my second year of university, I had that regret in mind and tried playing tennis left-handed from the start. I'd played tennis only a handful of times before, but I'd spent years swinging other rackets in table tennis and badminton, so it wasn't easy. I soon gave up on that, too. If I ever have a left-handed child, I'll make sure to teach them sports left-handed from the beginning. They can just mirror what I do—how convenient is that?

Regardless of which foot my child naturally favors, I'm definitely going to teach them soccer left-footed (*I'm right-footed). I thought being left- or right-footed was just a matter of choice, but apparently right-footedness is more common from birth, too*? Still, listen up, future sons and daughters: you'll be left-footed at a minimum, and two-footed if possible. You have no idea how many chances Dad has missed because he can't use his left foot. Whenever I try to kick with it, I end up looking like a five-year-old who's never played soccer…

*Interestingly, handedness and footedness are correlated to some degree, apparently.