There is a direct hotline from the devil’s mouth to my pencil. When I write I spew evil words onto the paper. Everything I touch is tainted with my weirdness. Aliens spawn in the hand that I write with. The Cold War was started by members of my cohort, a gang of evil Russian lefties. Every murderer EVER was a lefty. Ok, not really.

I write with my left hand. On a slightly more serious note, spiral notebooks are my sworn enemy, inky pens are the bane of my existence (maybe I’m being a little dramatic). I write with my left hand but cut, use a mouse, play tennis, play golf, and take pictures with my right. Because I live in a righty world.


Consider those little chairs in lecture halls with lift out desk tops. A prime example of lefty prejudice. They are always made for righties. When was the last time you saw a pair of lefty scissors? Lefty golf clubs are scarce; all cameras feature a button on the right side. The world is reluctant to accommodate lefties. Or at least it seems like that to me. Every couple of months an old friend discovers my left-side tendencies and exclaims, “You’re a lefty?!?! No, I would have noticed.” What am I supposed to say?: “Sorry I should have warned you. Didn’t you read the disclaimer when we became friends?” My left-sided leanings can be a shocking oddity.
I realize that as I write this essay I risk sounding like a whiny teenage girl. I’ll be the first one to admit, the adversity I face as a lefty is stunningly insignificant compared to the problems other teens face every day. But this mild adversity has opened my eyes to the conventional way people think. “Left” in French is “gauche” and in Italian, “sinistra.” I detect some lefty prejudice. “Sinister” as I may be, I am usually not hurt by being a lefty. While playing sports I can switch hands on a whim. Sometimes, being a lefty has even benefitted me. Lefties have advantages in most ball sports. I can type faster: there are 3400 words that can be made solely with the left hand on a QWERTY keyboard compared to 450 with the right. And if I wanted to write in Hebrew or Arabic, it would be easier for me. Interestingly, my three passions aren’t affected by left-handedness. I chose one of the few sports, swimming, where being a lefty doesn’t change anything. I play piano, and while this may make it easier to play left-handed melodies, it’s not like guitar, a whole different instrument for lefties.

My third passion is writing. I like to write things that make people smile, and it doesn’t matter what hand I write it with. Being a lefty has showed me that standardization is constricting, and differences should be embraced.

My fourth passion is for chocolate. No hand inequalities there.