About one percent of the world’s population is naturally ambidextrous, and I am not one of them.  I could best illustrate this fact by sharing examples of my handwriting, one sentence written with my right hand, the next with my left but, through the medium of the word processor these distinctions are lost.

Forced right-handedness has marginally increased the number of ambidextrous people in the world, where schools or society have tried to bully natural left-handers to conform to the more populous norm.  I still do not fall into this category.  I am naturally right-handed.  And yet, recently, I am using my left hand for one very specific activity.  Drinking beer.

The explanation is a simple one of cause and effect.  Increasingly, I find myself writing a blog post while also enjoying a pint of beer.  It is the beer journo’s equivalent of trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time.  Of the two activities, the one that requires a greater degree of motor skill co-ordination is writing.  Therefore, as a natural right-hander, it is entirely reasonable that I will hold my pen in my right hand.  But then what of my pint of beer?  That little beauty is not going to get drunk all on its own.  A modicum of assistance is required.  Step up left hand.  Take your rightful (or leftful) place, in this hour of need.

The skills are not too challenging.  A bit of gripping; a bit of lifting; a bit of hand-to-mouth navigation.  It is all within my left hand’s capabilities.  In fact, the more I find myself writing and the more I find myself drinking, the more left-handed I become, until I have written so much and drunk so much that I am completely ambidextrous: right and left hands indistinguishable one from the other.

Both equally useless.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue comes over all ambidextrous.