It’s hard to single out the first time I noticed that my left-handedness made me different. Maybe it was the first time I used a pair of safety scissors, and found it a lot harder than other people to cut in a straight line. It could have been in PE, when the teacher reproachfully asked «left hander?» when we played any kind of sport involving a bat or racket. Perhaps it was the delight expressed by my left handed mom, when I started to write my first letters and she realized that those alternative genes were stronger than they let on.

Whichever small moment it was, there’s no denying that I felt different to many other people once it clicked. Having your dominant hand be the one that’s not dominant in the population as a whole can be a hassle at times, mostly because so much of the world is designed with right handedness in mind. Nonetheless, a solid ten percent of the population persist in making their life more awkward for themselves with their back to front dexterity.

There are plenty of factoids that single out us alternatively angled folk, too. We claim to be more creative (I do like taking photos of interesting pieces of trash I see on the ground) and are more prone to allergies (I await the springtime with baited breath, and it isn’t because of the beauty of nature). 

We’re also more likely to be depressed (who isn’t?), gay (just because we’re sad, doesn’t mean we don’t know how to have fun) and supposedly have a shorter life span (that would be something to look forward to, if it hadn’t since been proved wrong). 

If these many myths and oddities are anything to go by, left handers really are Not Like The Other Girls. That is, unless we’re taking ambidextrous people into account as well — but let’s be honest, they’re just trying to make the rest of us look bad. 

The plight of the left handed was recently discussed in a viral Twitter thread, where lefties congregated to commiserate and tell tales of how their handedness had affected them in childhood versus now. There are a lot of common struggles out there, especially for older individuals who might have grown up in a time when their natural inclination was frowned upon. We may have been touched by the Devil, but many of us don’t mind too much that it turned out that way.