Handedness and Kilts

[Jerry]

I am also right handed. I think I read somewhere that right handedness is a requirement for traditional kilt makers. I wonder if the trait of handedness is found in animals. I think my cat might be right pawed. Can one be right handed and left footed?

I seem to remember reading about race horses being righties or lefties, right or left lead.

[AckZel]

Right On! Why the hell do we have the cocking lever on the Finnish AR at the right side?

[KiltedKnight]

I have a Boxer and she uses both of her paws whenever she does anything, like open the gates to let herself in and out of the yard, open the refrigerator in the garage to eat anything in there that she feels like eating if I leave the garage open. If I try to go in the house when she's not through playing she uses both paws to trip me.


Chris.

[Wompet]

I'm amazed to read about so many people being "forced" into right-handedness at school. I wish my teachers had been so foresighted.

It wasn't so much foresight as it was forced conformity in most cases. My father tells the story of how his teachers forced him to write right-handed, but the results were so bad that they had to let him use his left hand.

There's also the matter of what you're doing with the hand in question. For quick or detail work, I use my left; for tasks requiring steadiness or broad movements, I use my right. Others have shown similar tendencies in their responses. Ask yourself - can you do the fine line work of Arabic script better with your right hand or your left (ignoring the flow of the text, just the precision of the strokes).

And back on topic: are you threading the belt through the buckle, or the belt through belt loops? If the former, simply hold both belt and buckle "upside-down" in your normal hands and thread normally.
If the latter, you've been wearing your belts left-handed all these years. I don't mean that to be snide, it's just that as a rule men's fashion - kilts, shirts, pants, belts - fastens left over right. The left-hand buckle fastens over the belt coming from the right. The best advice I can give is get one of your ambidextrous belts, thread and fasten it the way you normally would, then remove it by feeding it through the belt loops with your left hand. Once your comfortable feeding from the left, try putting on the belt that way - hold the buckle in your right hand, like you normally would, but with the belt facing so it will wrap around your body from the left. Thread it through the loops with your left hand, center the buckle and fasten. Then decide the whole thing is bloody hindering ackward, and put the belt on like you normally would, just using the opposite hands.

[Mike n NC]

When I started school (near the buckle of the bible belt) teachers still corrected lefties saying that the left hand was the devils hand and no good work could come of it.
I'm right handed but have taught myself to do many things left handed to aid in work situations. I'm also left eye dominate as I have found many, many people to be when I was teaching marksmanship. I still use a right hand bolt but aim with my left eye from my left shoulder.

Mike

[GlassMan]

Im right handed. but eat left handed and like GlassMan write slanted to the left.When dancing i am stronger on the left than the right. But then living on the bottom of the planet i suppose its like the water going down the plug hole, downunder its in the opposite direction to your end of the world,so who's screwd up, the north or the south, or all of us, or just me........!!!!!!! :confused: :confused: :confused:

I hadn't realized it but I eat left-handed too! Without thinking my fork is always in my left hand. But my spoons tend to be in my right! Weird.

[GlassMan]

Just to add my name to the statistics --- I was a left-handed kid, but got so sick of the problems of writing with the left hand that I taught myself to use the right during secondary school. It took a while, but eventually became natural and readable.
When I learnt Arabic, however, it was an assset to be able to write from right to left with the left hand -- even though, for religious reasons, very few Arabs use their LH.

Martin S

My Yemeni Uncle-in-law told me that the prohibition on using the left-hand is far more cultural than religious. He claimed that the nomads to the north (in Saudi Arabia and the Bedouins elsewhere in the Arab world) traditional wiped themselves after moving their bowels with their left hands, and so to do anything else with your left hand was to be causing that act to be unclean and the items touched to be unclean.

I've never known whether that was true or whether it was just a slander by the city-dwelling Yemenites against their nomadic neighbors. (Since the area of Yemen has been filled with cities since Biblical times while the deserts of Saudi Arabia were mainly nomadic except for the Red Sea coast until the 20th century).

Anyone know if this is true or if he was just being bigoted towards rural arabs?

[Sherry]

All righties in my family, tho' I am left-eye dominant.

Nowadays, it is considered cruel to try to change a leftie to a rightie. Penmanship books give diagrams for proper positioning of the hand & paper for both hands. (As a home schooler, I've seen quite a few of these books.)

I was in K-6 from '65 to '72 (in the South), & I never once saw a teacher try to change a southpaw to a northpaw.

[GlassMan]

Does anyone know where the term "southpaw" came from?

[davedove]

My Yemeni Uncle-in-law told me that the prohibition on using the left-hand is far more cultural than religious. He claimed that the nomads to the north (in Saudi Arabia and the Bedouins elsewhere in the Arab world) traditional wiped themselves after moving their bowels with their left hands, and so to do anything else with your left hand was to be causing that act to be unclean and the items touched to be unclean.

I've never known whether that was true or whether it was just a slander by the city-dwelling Yemenites against their nomadic neighbors. (Since the area of Yemen has been filled with cities since Biblical times while the deserts of Saudi Arabia were mainly nomadic except for the Red Sea coast until the 20th century).

Anyone know if this is true or if he was just being bigoted towards rural arabs?

I have heard that before about different cultures. In fact, is some cultures, when you sit down to eat, your left hand is always kept under the table, the only exception being if your right hand is disabled.

I don't know the actual reason, although I've heard the wiping theory before.