What Am I


All the desks were made the same. Every student had to enter from the left side opening and you did your work on the right side of the desk. When my small first grade frame slid into the seat, I twisted and turned because I used my left hand to color and write. After a few minutes of practicing my letters the teacher appeared over my shoulder and had me sit up straight. I protested because there was no way I could reach the right side of the desk with my left hand if I was sitting straight.

"Don't worry, Brent," she said with a smile. "You aren't supposed to write with your left hand anyway. That's just wrong." I tried to control the pencil without much luck and quickly became frustrated as I tried to get the hang of it.

"I can't," I said.

She calmly replied, "It's okay, I've taught many young boys and girls to write the right way." She smiled as she had redirected another misguided student from a path of sinister left handed shame and had led me toward the proper use of my right hand. She kept after me and so I persisted. Even though I held my pencil like a dagger for another two years I still enjoyed writing, but quality penmanship required a particular patience and effort.

It would be several more years before I realized that I was just left handed. Or was I? The more I thought about it I realized that I ate using my right hand not my left. So I decided to see what would happen if I tried to eat  with my left hand. It was an easy transition and I ate like it was second nature, or maybe first. Shortly afterward I learned the term ambidextrous. There was a label just for me. Or was there?

When I played baseball I threw with my right hand but I batted left handed. I later reasoned that the best explanation for the contradiction was that I used hand-me-down mitts when I was young and all our baseball gloves went on the left hand. Since, there is no such thing as a right or left handed bat I was thinking maybe I was naturally left handed and only ambidextrous when circumstances or teachers made me. Or was I?

When it came to tennis I have always played using my right hand. This was true even though one of my favorite tennis players was the left handed Jimmy Connors. You would think, that if I was naturally left handed I would have modeled my tennis hero and played left handed. So this brought me back to being ambidextrous. Or did it?

I am a lousy bowler with either hand but I have thrown four consecutive strikes with my left hand. I switched to left handed golf clubs in my late 30s and improved my swing but achieved similar results. Perhaps I am an anomaly. Or am I?  

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