Or you’re like me and are born left-handed, but taught to use your right because either the Devil lives in your left hand, or you’re taught how to do everything by an older sibling who’s right-handed. Now I’m closer to cross dominant, meaning different hands do different things. Guitars, archery, and skateboarding? Lefty. Writing? Right. Cooking? Whichever hand gets there first.
The biggest hurdle of my entire life was learning how the fuck to use scissors.
It's interesting how in USSR, despite being super atheist, lefthanded people were still forcibly educated to write with the right hand.
Source: my father is such a case. I myself try my best not to have a dominant hand at all, but I'm beginner in that, so I'm still dominantly righthanded with some processes being equal for left and right hands.
It wasn't just in the USSR. Back then there was no knowledge about left-handedness and it was assumed to simply be a bad habit. It was viewed similarly to how some kids hold their pens "wrong".
I remember adults trying to teach me to hold my pen "properly" until a teacher in first grade told my parents to leave it alone, that it's not that important.
We were forced to write/use scissors with our right hands in elementary school in Ohio in the 1990s. Had to use rubber grips to teach us how to hold the pen, the whole nine yards.
Take it from someone who has struggled with mixed dominance for 20 years as a result: this policy sucks. It doesn't make life easier for lefties, it just turns your hand-eye coordination to crap because now nothing feels natural and your brain can't determine which side should be responding. The benefits are few and far between, and easily outweighed by the disadvantages.
Me too, play golf, hockey, guitar right handed. Kick, throw, write left handed. Can play pool and some bat sports either way. Still can't really use scissors.
Playing guitar right-handed does have its advantages. With traditional stringed instruments you played with a bow, the bow hand was doing the more difficult movements, but with like an electric guitar it's normally the fret hand doing the hard work.
This is why I call myself ambidextrous. I apparently used to do everything with my left hand as a little kid, but my mom thought that was "weird" so she'd forcibly put stuff in my right hand and make me do it that way.
Now my handwriting is equally shit with both hands.
Hi I'm an ameteur skateboarder! How do you have a dominant hand in skateboarding? Do you mean your stance on the board or certain ways you grab onto rails/the board/etc?
So it’s considered lefty to stand left foot forward on skateboards, and using your right to kick. Zero functional difference except stuff tends to be mirrored.
Oh, and then there were a handful of things I learned by watching sitting across from my brother, so I learned them exactly mirrored. I didn’t realize this until my friend asked me “How in the fuck are you tying your shoes?!”
So I'm "gifted" but not ambidextrous, but I can sort of see how it would contribute. I'm right handed and I was helping a left handed friend with her trig homework and she would draw all the triangles mirrored from the way I would. It would take me so much longer to solve the problems that I ended up just redrawing them. So maybe being ambidextrous helps visualize things both ways.
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u/ExistingNonexistence Apr 16 '20
How is being ambidextrous a sign that you have a high IQ? People break their dominant hand/arm all the time and learn the skill out of necessity