Left Hand
Many Windows versions ago, I discovered that the mouse settings could also be modified for left handed users. Otherwise the world in its rightful righteousness ignored the needs of us lefties.

I would have become a complete righty and I owe it to my kindergarten teacher who vetoed the stupid idea, which a neighbourhood aunt had put in my mother’s mind – to enclose my left hand in a sock, so that I’m discouraged from using it. There are a lot of negative attitudes towards the left hand, especially in a culture like ours, where the prime importance of the left hand is cleaning up at the end of the digestive process.

Emulating others as a kid, especially in sports made me opt for right handed play. And I never excelled in any, though I played quite a many. Bowling right-arm-over-the-wicket didn’t fetch me as many scalps which my natural tendency for left-arm-around-the-wicket action would perhaps had. Where ever I go, what ever I do I find everything designed for people with a more dominant left brain. Even the damn potato-peeler is angled to suit a right-hander and also those scissors. I trained myself in using right-handed scissors, but simply can’t peel potatoes with any other hand but my left.

The conflict between my inner left inclined self and the rightist world outside made me an oxymoron of sorts. Not always is the right right for me. I write with my left but throw darts using the right. This is reminiscent of the phenomenon of dominant cultures gobbling up the little ones.

And the left-handed option on the mouse is also useless, I have become so attuned with the existing scheme of things that any modifications will only be accompanied by loss in efficiency. Anyway, all mouse trays are to the right.

“If the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body, and the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body, then left-handed people must be the only ones in their right minds.”

~ W.C. Fields

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