A Comm for Historymemes

Fortunately enough I mostly escaped the southpaw erasure bullshit.

My uncle would tease me for being a "lefty." By calling me a "lefty."

My grandmother had a tendency to ask passive-aggressive questions. Like "Why do you only ever wear one pair of shoes?" Because I'm four years old and I'll outgrow these before I wear them out. Why buy more than one?" Or "Can't you put your foot out straight?" No, I can't. It got bent in the womb and the corrective shoe I wore when I was 0.5 did a reasonable job but it's still a little crooked and there's really nothing I can do about it that isn't very uncomfortable. "Why don't you use your right hand?" Because I'm left handed.

The way my mother tells it, when it was time for me to start drawing with crayons, she put a crayon in my right hand and then colored some with her own crayon to show me how, and I transferred my crayon to my left hand and started coloring, and mama said "Oh he's left handed. Okay." And from there she would hold out spoons or writing utensils and let me take them with the hand I preferred.

In school, none of the faculty ever tried to force me to be right-handed, though my elementary school teachers had no idea how to teach handwriting to a lefty. I did have a fifth grade teacher who, for reasons only known to the bug in her cunt, REQUIRED the use of a spiral-bound notebook. Right handed folks might not realize, lefties end up resting their hands against the spiral bindings at the beginning of every line and it starts to hurt. A spiralless notebook was just unacceptable.

I was just talking about my first and second grade years today. It was 1977/78. Both teachers those two grades tied my left hand down and forced me to try to learn to write with my right hand. What it did was make my handwriting absolutely terrible. This was due to the fact that in the third grade they didn't teach you that anymore and I never had any practice at it. My parents didn't care it happened since my dad was convinced a left handed man just couldn't match a right handed mans abilities. It was because the school nearly got sued by another students parents that they finally ended that bit of abuse. This is the southern US by the way. The place that is permanently out of step with decency.

Everyone is born right-handed. Only the greatest overcome it.

I got slapped by my teacher infront of everyone for pointing and showing with my left hand, that the answer I have written on the answer sheet is correct and I should get the marks. Then he lectured me for ten minutes about not using my left hand ever again in his presence. Flamed my parents that they should have taught me that and are bad at parenting. He finally gave me full marks, but I cried the whole day and got humiliated infront of whole class. This happened in 2000s

1950? This happened to me in the 90s

You can thank the Romans’ adoption of the Bible for that stigma.

In Latin, sinestra means on the left side. Left handed people were referred to as sinister. After the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality. As a result, some time during the Latin Classical Era the definition shifted to its current meaning of evil.

Explanation: It used to be fairly normal for teachers in the US, at least, to 'correct' left-handed children by striking their hand or otherwise punishing them for using it for primary-hand tasks. My great-uncle suffered this bizarre form of correction as a child.

My wife is 50 and she was almost forced to be right handed in late '70s/ early '80s. She is still left-handed, but she is almost ambidextrous. Maybe forcing people to do things with their weak hand isn't a bad thing, but obviously we shouldn't mandate they can only use their right hand. What if we had a society full of ambidextrous people? What if we force people to learn how to write with both hands?

Knuckle rapping: for those naughty kids in Catholic school. And also lefties.

I grew up in the 90s and went to public school, so I didn't have this experience. What I did experience was using the shittiest scissors in the classroom, and having to share it with 3 other kids because there was exactly one left handed pair.

Also lots of criticism about my handwriting.