I am able to use either hand for almost everything I do(1). Certainly I favor one hand or the other for some things, but even then I can usually switch at need. Handy… uh, so to speak.
I bat left handed, bowl left handed, golf right handed, shoot pool either hand, pour water into the coffee maker with either hand, write mostly with the left hand, but can make legible notes with the right when necessary. I keep an extra keypad on the left side of my keyboard so I can have arrow keys available to both hands, etc. All mixed up, you might say, though I prefer to think of it as having more options.
Why is she doing that? Because she can, Silly!
The usual term in English for this is “ambidextrous.” It dawned on me somewhat slowly what this actually means. To wit: from the Latin: “ambi” meaning both, and “dexter” meaning right.
Not hand. Right.
So, ambidextrous means two right hands, or (I suppose) that the person can use either hand as his right hand.
I find I really don’t like that. I find I want to sue somebody. (No, not really… 🙂 ) What a deeply buried, deeply ingrained, deeply disturbing prejudice this is. As if to say, “of course, no one uses the left hand for anything at all, so if you actually use either hand, you must have two right hands(2)(3).”
Ugh.
In heraldry, right is “dexter” and left is “sinister.” Go figure
Oh, ok. I understand the probable origin of this prejudice. Likely from the “dirty hand” concept common in desert countries (some how hanging on even in water-wealthy countries). Or why it’s the right hand that is cut off (for a first offense) when caught for theft (same countries). Or why right is also the opposite of wrong. Or why dexter is the opposite of sinister (in heraldry mostly — sinister meaning on the left; dexter, as said above, meaning right).
Leaves one wondering how many folks around the world identify themselves with what ever passes for right-wing politics in their country simply because of a subconscious (or otherwise) reaction to the words “right” and “left.” Or left-wing, for that matter.
Gah.
Not a very good reason to chose a political affiliation. Though, as you might guess from some of my other postings, I don’t think political affiliation is a very good idea under any conditions. Why vote for some one else’s agenda and platform? Don’t you have your own ideas about how things ought to go? Vote for the candidate(s) that match your agenda as closely as possible. Forget the “party” as that’s some one else’s agenda. A party inevitably forms a power block which must lead away from government by / for / of the People and to a government by / for / of the Party, which then leads (as history has shown many times over and over again) to totalitarianism in one form or another(4).
Gadzooks. That doesn’t seem very dexter to me! Though maybe a little sinister.
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(1) My father hated that, actually. When I was five and we were playing catch, I’d throw the ball back with one hand then with the other. He actually had my mom take me to a doctor to figure out which hand I should be using! That doctor made a decision and I sort of obeyed — being still that young. Later in life I reverted to the ambi-handed style of life that had been my first calling. I find it interesting that not one single adult involved in any of that (including my teachers, who were enlisted to enforce the doctor’s choice of handedness) had any concept of bi-handedness. (Nor any concept of why I started stuttering horribly shortly thereafter; fiddling with one’s handedness can do that!) Using your left hand is, I guess, far enough outside the Herd’s tolerance; using both hands? Forget it! Just forget that!! Baaaa-aa-aa-aad.
(2) There’s an old Outer Limits episode where the hero / scientist briefly has, in fact, two right hands — complicated experiment and odd side-effect, eventually sorted out. Remember the episode? No? Ok, fine. Season 1, 1963, episode 12: the Borderland. Not to be confused with another episode (#5, same year, the Sixth Finger), where our non-scientist hero briefly has 6 useful fingers on each hand. I doubt there’s any Latin for that, prejudicial or otherwise! 🙂
(3) Even worse, in Medieval Europe (and other times and places, even since) a left handed person was considered (literally) a Spawn of Satan and inherently evil. Even in my life time I’ve had on occasion to put up with such judgments aimed in my direction. I usually just smile, switch to the other hand and move on. This confuses the heck out of such people! 🙂
(4) Unfortunately, there are many forms of totalitarianism. A dictatorship is only the most obvious form. Then there are the Hidden Forms of Totalitarianism, which can take many shapes and, by definition, are hard to spot.