Somehow, I missed the fact that yesterday was the twenty-third annual National Left-Handers Day. Maybe that is because our resident lefty is out of town and wasn’t here to remind me!
August 13 is, in fact, National Left-Handers Day – a celebration of sinisters - the 10 percent or 11 percent of our population (depending on which stat you see). Lefties face some challenges, though, considering most school desks are configured for righties, scissors are fashioned for the opposite hand and even such mundane daily items as ballpoint pins, credit card machines and automobile cup holders are fashioned for the 89 percent.
I feel their pain.
Speaking of the pain thing, who coined that phrase, any way? I think it was Ol’ Bill Clinton, back in the 1992 election. Whether you voted for the left or the right (politically) in ’92, all of us were ultimately voting for ‘the left.’ All three candidates: Bush, Clinton and even Ross Perot were left-handers.
So, if you think about it, in that election, the left was bound to be right!
Going a bit deeper, Bush and Clinton were part of a modern trend. Over the course of 44 Presidents, eight of them (18 percent - exceeding the national average) have been southpaws and most of those are recent residents of the White House (Ford, Reagan, Bush #41, Clinton and Obama).
The number could be even higher except that for many years, folks were trained not to be left-handed. So, even though James Garfield is documented as the first Presidential southpaw, maybe some of the earlier POTUSes could have been?
It’s a point to ponder.
If 18 percent of the residents of the White House have been southpaws, I can tell you that 25 percent of the residents of the Gary House are lefties (Roger, notwithstanding).
Paul’s left-handedness hasn’t served him well in terms of penmanship. But what he lacked in longhand, he more than made up on the baseball field. He served as a big left-handed bat in the middle of our line-up. When we were in the field, he pitched and played first base for the Choppers. His unique pitching motion served him well.
Speaking of southpaws, we actually had another great left-handed pitcher, Will, on our championship team in 2010 and, a year earlier, our starting rotation featured three lefties. I haven’t done the math, but I know that’s more than 10 percent!
Anyway, the lucky lefties did well for us on the diamond.
I’m not sure what benefit, if any, Paul’s lefthandedness carries in the theatre (although it was fun to watch him fence lefthanded in “Cyrano”). But no matter the pursuit – drama, baseball or handwriting – we have always celebrated his lefty status.
And today (I mean yesterday) we celebrate lefties everywhere!
JG
Originally posted 8/14/2013
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