What do Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, Ratan Tata, Amitabh Bachchan, Prince Charles, Julia Roberts and Oprah Winfrey have in common?

If you answered “they are all left-handed,” right on, because these famous men and women are among the thousands of left-handed people who have left their mark on the world.
Right-handed people rarely think about which hand another person is using, but lefties are quick to spot.

I was born left-handed, and still I am. :-) I don’t know why, I suppose there’s something about the way my brain is wired that makes me more comfortable taking a pen or a knife in my left hand than in my right. I’ve never been called a devil-worshipper or a communist like some left-handers. Sometimes I struggle with tools that were designed to be used in the right hand; right-handers tease me for my clumsiness, although I’m sure they’d fare even worse with tools designed for the left hand. I have personally seen people forcefully handing the pen or pencil into the right hand of their child just to make sure he becomes a right hander.

Here I gathered some possible advantages of left-handedness:-)

Some studies have shown that “…left-handers also tend to have unusually good visual-spatial skills and the ability to imagine spatial layouts.” Santrock goes on to point out that mathematicians, musicians, architects, and artists are more commonly left-handers than would be expected. “Also, in one study of more than 100,000 students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), 20% of the top-scoring group was left-handed, twice the rate of left-handedness found in the general population (10%). Left-handedness may also reduce the risk of developing arthritis.
Other reported associations include with higher creativity, a larger corpus callosum, certain right brain regions being larger, shorter transfer time of information between hemispheres, and higher socioeconomic status.

The advantage to players in one-on-one sports such as tennis, boxing, fencing or judo is that in a population containing perhaps 10% left-handers and 90% right-handers, the left-hander plays 90% of his or her games against right-handed opponents and is well-practised at dealing with this asymmetry. Right-handers play 90% of their games against other right-handers. Thus, when confronted with left-handers, they are less practised. When two left-handers compete against each other, they are both likely to be at the same level of practice as when right-handers play other right-handers. This explains why a disproportionately high number of left-handers are found in sports in which direct one-on-one action predominates.

The following cartoon depicts how the elder people still consider left hand as inauspicious.

There are a few actual facts about lefties that I found surprising when I started looking into this whole left/right thing:

• Left-handed people are three times more likely to become alcoholics than right-handers.
• According to one study, left-handers life span is 9 years less than right-handers — which makes perfect sense considering they are three times more likely to be alcoholics.
• Statistically speaking, the older a mother, the more likely she is to give birth to a left-handed child.
• If both parents are left handed, 50% of their children will be left-handed, however if both parents are righties, there is only a 2% chance the child will be left-handed.
• Lefties are twice as likely to be male.
• Lefties tend to reach puberty 4 to 5 months later than right-handers.
• As a result of living in a right-handers world, 50% of left-handers report using a computer mouse with their right hand, 68% of lefties use right handed scissors, and 74% use a dinner knife with their right hand.
• Lefties also adjust to seeing underwater quicker.
• 1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed.
• 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed.
• Lefties with a college education make 10 to 15% more than their right-handed equivalents.
• Plus, we even have our own day! Left Handed Day is celebrated each year on August 13th, which is pretty cool.

There are even few websites that have tips for lefties and even sell products specially designed for lefties.
Few of them are:
www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk
www.beinglefthanded.com
www.lefthandersday.com

Happy Reading :-)

(Image Source: Google Images)