What Left-Handedness Reveals About How the Brain Works (2014)

>If you don't have soap

I don't think unavailability of soap posed higher risk than unavailability of the toilet by itself. I guess areas where soap/water is unavailable, they go 'Bear Grylls' of cleaning with leafs.

I'm a right handed American, but apparently sort of use left handed European style--I hold the fork in the right hand and the knife in the left hand, and they stay that way for both cutting and conveying to mouth.

I say sort of because that says European style is tines down, and Wikipedia tells me that tines down is used in that style even when using the fork to lift something that isn't impaled on the fork, whereas I do the sensible thing and flip to tines up for such tasks.

I do not understand either American style or European style with the fork in the left hand, but maybe I don't eat anything that requires great knife dexterity to cut at the table, so putting and keeping the knife in the less dexterous hand seems the logical approach.

Are there common foods that are sufficiently challenging to cut at the table that the knife needs to be in the dominant hand?

The cutlery question that I want an answer to is why the heck do my steak knives have a sharp tip? I don't stab my steaks. I cut them, which would be fine with a rounded tip. The only stabbing my steak knives ever do is my hand, by accident, when I'm loading or unloading the dishwasher.

PS: I was completely unable to recall or figure out what my knife and fork style was while reading this thread. I had to go to the kitchen and actually get a knife and fork, and actually go through the motions with them in hand to see what I did.

Interesting...thanks for the link.

I did some further reading and found this rule from 1876 on not playing left handed.

Rule 7: The ball may be stopped, but not carried or knocked, by any part of the body. No player shall raise his stick above his shoulder. The ball shall be played from right to left, and no left or back-handed play, charging, tripping, collaring, (pulling the shirt) or shinning, (hitting the leg) shall be allowed.

I've been teaching myself to be ambidextrous. It started a few years ago after injuring my right elbow with lots of wood working, drilling and screwing and sawing. I started trying to drill and drive screws with my left hand. It felt very awkward at first, but after a few tries I started getting the hang of it. I would put the drill back in my right hand and pay attention to the angles and positions and then try to do that with my left hand. It takes a while to build up that coordination, but it does happen.

After a while I was using my left hand so frequently that I actually started getting the same injury in my left elbow and started going back to my right hand again. For a while I could not squeeze hand clamps with my left hand. I since have trained myself to notice when one or the other arm is getting sore and switch, and haven't had these problems in a couple years.

I also had to switch to using mice with my left hand when my right wrist started getting sensitive. I put two mice on my home and work computers and would just use the left one when my right side was getting sore.

Last year I consciously started doing everything with my left side as often as I do with my right: using forks and chop sticks, sawing, splitting wood with a hatchet (using an axe is a both-sided thing and there is very little difference which hand is on top). I haven't put the practice into writing with my left hand yet, it's harder to get past the awkwardness of something I expect to do so automatically. But I will keep working on it. And some things I just can't do with the left hand like bass playing or gear shifting, unless I want to move to England and get a custom guitar built!

I was in a meeting with someone from Japan and was astonished to see him take notes with his left hand (generally a taboo in Japan). He was taking notes in English during a meeting in English. Later I saw him writing in Japanese...with his right hand! I assume he was born left-handed and had it mostly wrung out of him in school and at home, but perhaps the English teachers couldn't care less. He exhibits no speech impediment.

(My own kid exhibited the "English teachers couldn't care less" phenomenon, though not in handedness: he was required to use only a fountain pen for schoolwork, except in English where pencils were allowed (they still used the German letterforms). His handwriting was clear as a bell except in English where it was barely legible -- even to me, a native English speaker!).