Viva la Lefties!

My wife and one of my daughters are left-handed, meaning that exactly 25% of my family writes with their left hand. This is almost double the percentage in the general population, which is around 13%. If it is true that left handed people are the only one's in their right minds, then I guess my family has been doubly blessed. But most of the time my wife does not consider it a blessing to be left handed in a right handed world (despite the fact that she can celebrate with her left handed friends on August 13, International Left Handers Day). While 13% of the population might be left handed, 99.9% of the world is designed for right handed people. I found this out when I hurt by right thumb a couple weeks ago. Try starting your car with your left hand! You have to be a contortionist just to reach around the steering wheel. The doctor who stitched up my cut was left handed but was trying to cut the stitches with a right handed scissors. It is not easy being left handed at school either. How about adapting to a right handed desk, a right handed pencil sharpener, and even a right handed mouse. For Pete's sake, even potato peelers are right handed.

We may not have very many left handed students in our school, but we do have some who often feel like they are left handed in a right handed world. What seem like simple learning tasks to most of us just don't come easily to them. It isn't any easier for them to do the math or read the story than it is for a left handed person to write with their right hand. They try to cope, but every day is a struggle. What can we do to help?

That's a tough question. Here's something we should not do. There was a time, not so long ago, when left handed people were forced to be right handed. Left handedness was actually seen as a disease that needed curing! Struggling in school is not a disease, either! So, don't treat it as one by trying to fix it with a miracle cure. In all likelihood it will take considerable time and effort, just as it would for me to learn to write with my left hand. I believe that given enough time I could learn, but if you judged my first attempts and compared them with others who were writing with their dominant hand, you would first laugh and then you might give up on me!

PCHS is not here to turn left handed students into right handed ones. We are here to help students develop the gifts God has given them, and use those gifts in service to him. So, here's to left handedness and the uniqueness God gives to each on of us!