Thank goodness I learned to play guitar right handed. I would have been pretty miserable instrument shopping. 90% of the guitars hanging on a showroom wall would taunt me to no end…it would be like Moses who never got to enter the promised land
I’m also quite glad I’m not a lefty drummer (since I’m not a drummer at all). Every time you’d sit down behind a set at Sam Ash, you’d have to turn everything around just to play it.
Went out to buy a new baseball glove yesterday and was reminded of our cursed backwards neurology or something lol.
Ha, that explains everything! But seriously, I’m very curious about the left handed trait … and how our society has an innate bias against it (guitars, baseball gloves, etc). I think m24p once said he was a lefty. I don’t see him around here much anymore.
The lefty’s I have known in the past have tended to be artistic and creative, or at least unusual and non-conformist in some way. I believe the standard left-brain/right-brain definitions (analytical/symbolic) are reversed for lefty’s.
I’m left-handed also, but have learned almost everything other than writing right handed. However, although I have a really a good sense of rhythm, I am completely unable to play the drums. It’s like I don’t know which hands to use where. Lol
Another lefty here. My favorite uncle taught me to shoot right-handed due to the hazards of autoloading rifles/shotguns-- the lefty shooter catches the empty brass(hot!) in the face.
I learned guitar, etc., everything but writing and eating right-handed, but can’t use a hand saw with my right hand to save my life.
The real upside though-- my professional career is as a French horn player-- it fingers with the left!
Interesting you’d mention it. I’d shoot a bow and arrow left, a hand gun either way…back when I was a kid I realized I had to learn to shoot right handed with a rifle for that reason.
Piano and organ are also instruments that could care less which hemisphere of your brain is the dominant one.
I have some bizarre form of handedness that has a label that I cannot remember now. I naturally write and eat with my left hand but do everything else right handed. Not that I was forced to conform to right-handedness, but because it’s natural to. “Ambidextrous” is not the word; that means doing the same task with either hand, and the only thing for which that applies for me is brushing my teeth, I switch hands during that process.
I once visited a “left handed store” and the nice lady behind the counter is the one who told me the term I cannot remember when I described this. “Oh! You’re [X]!” Whenever I take any of those brain assessment things that work out which of the four quadrants one uses most, I end up smack dab in the center every time. No idea what that means… although I’m certainly non-conformist and kinda unusual in weird ways too.
Lefty baseball pitchers have a rep in the game for sure, as being somewhat flaky and oddball. In a world where players routinely adopt bizarre rituals and habits, these guys stand out in that respect by all accounts, so there must be something to it.
But yes, I’m glad I don’t play guitar lefty either!
Edit: Google to the rescue! The term describing my handedness is “cross-dominant.” What a mental scar eraser that is to recall after all these years of not remembering!!
I’m a lefty, and I bought my first guitar when I was 60 from a pawn shop. It was lefthanded, an Austin, and I took it to a guitar shop and had them tune it open G so I could play slide like Lowell George (right). I still can’t play! I play my ukulele backwards, again not very well, so it doesn’t matter that much.
It is sort of a club. Righthandedness is so common, it doesn’t have the same comradery except maybe a tiny superiority complex over lefthanders. Personally, I’m proudly left, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
But seriously, I’m very curious about the left handed trait … and how our society has an innate bias against it (guitars, baseball gloves, etc). I think m24p once said he was a lefty. I don’t see him around here much anymore.