It’s Right to Be Left-Handed Today, or Any Day

I'm pretty sure that my entire life, I have heard all the "left-handed" horror stories. I'd hear about how, many years ago, they'd smack your hand with a ruler in school to make you write with your right hand.

I don't recall ever being told I needed to learn how to write with any particular hand.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of challenges that come along with being left-handed. There are specific tools to help us with these challenges. I got this list from Newsweek

• Left-handed general purpose scissors with fully reversed blades
• Left-handed tin opener with geared rotary action
• Left-handed swivel blade peeler
• T-pattern left-handed corkscrew with anti-clockwise screw
• Pack of 5 lead pencils printed in the left-handed direction
• 2-hole left-handed pencil sharpener with case
• Clear plastic left-handed ruler 6" / 15cm ruler scaled from right to left
• Left-hander's notepad with the pages glued on the right so you can tear them off easily when writing left-handed

I use to hate that I could never open a can and help in the kitchen because we only had right-handed tools.

This begs the question as to why being left-handed has always been considered the lesser of the two options. We even describe a less-than-perfect compliment as being "left-handed," and that got me thinking about how there are actually a lot of very successful people that are left-handed. Oprah, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and President Barack Obama, just to name a few lefties.

Was it their "left-handedness" that made them want to overcome this stereotype of being less than because of the hand they write with?

Should we let science weigh in on this? Are we born with a left-handed tendency? Is it genetic?

Let's band together, my fellow lefthanders, and cheers to us today!