Left, not right!

These past few days, something bothered me.

Whenever I took pictures of my niece using the digicam, they turned out fuzzy. True enough, she moved half the time, but that didn't account for the other half of the fuzzy pictures.

Which only meant one thing : My hands are not steady enough.

Now, that's DEFINITELY what a 22 year-old person wants to think of herself. What more a medical student. The pathway to being a surgeon suddenly becomes dim...

Then I realized something : I am left-handed. I take pictures with my right hand, like all normal right-handed people do. After using my left hand to take the pictures (don't ask me how, I just did it) the pictures were of better quality.

It's hard you know, having an attribute shared only among 10% of the world's population. And out there, it's a world made for the majority - the right-handed people. It's even worse than gender discrimination. At an early age, I discovered using scissors with my left hand is futile, writing with pencil (Primary 1 to 3) resulted in smudges on the side of my palm that was in contact with the paper. Fountain pens were my worst enemies. Not only they caused smudges, because of the angle I held the pen (to prevent further smudges), the ink wouldn't flow. When I started cooking, even the wooden spatula was shaped to make things difficult for me.

So I tried to adapt myself. Doing things with my right hand. And the outcome is not bad at all. I can now use a knife with both hands, write with either (although my right is slower). I can play musical instruments designed for right-handers. Though my left hand is still dominant, I can do things with my right fairly well. Which sometimes make me forget that I'm a leftie in the first place, resulting in episodes such as the picture-taking.

New mantra to repeat to self : Left, not right!

Found some interesting facts on left-handedness (excerpt taken from a website):

"In the category of art, both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were left handed. In the category of music, Ludwig van Beethoven was left handed. In the field of science and invention, you find Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. In the field of motion pictures, Charlie Chaplin. Bobby Fisher, the modern chess genius, is left handed. So too musical geniuses Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Wynton Marsalis.
Each of the these persons had a mind so exceptional as to be head and shoulders above anyone else in their field. So even though it may be more difficult for a left handed person to live in a right handed world, lefties can know that they are in good company. Beethoven and Einstein had it tough, too".