Ever Meet a Left-Handed Corkscrew?

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”—Sir Isaac Newton

“The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”—Jacob Bronowski

CLEMSON, SC—(Weekly Hubris)—10/11/10—Anthropologists have suggested that the universal preference for the right hand has more to do with the sun than earthly demographics. If one is facing south in the Northern hemisphere, sunlight moves left to right across the earth or the face of a sundial. If one faces the rising sun, always a good omen, the north looms coldly on your left. Therefore, if the gods are right-handed, as early humans assumed, those made in the gods’ image must be right-handed . . . even if half of us are female.

Woe betides the lefty regardless of gender, and many Indo-European languages preserve that ancient bias.

The Latin sinister means “unfavorable,” the French gauche means “crooked,” the German linkisch means “awkward,” and the Italian stanca means “tired.” Moreover, they all mean “left.” A quick overview of English idioms shows a similar bias: a “left-handed wife” is a mistress; a “left-handed son” is illegitimate; the “left-hand path” is black magic; and a “left-handed compliment” is one of dubious sincerity.

In British dialect, cack-handed reveals that the left hand was traditionally the “privy hand,” while back-pawed implies that lefties are animals. Likewise, British and Scottish superstitions lean heavily to the right: one starts a journey or crosses a threshold on the right foot; one passes food at the table clockwise, and shipshape sailors coil their ropes left to right. “The devil’s writing” is an Americanism that reveals what right-minded teachers thought of left-handed students and their left-leaning handwriting.

Offhand, I’d say that hands are all over the Queen’s English and some of the king’s as well. “To keep one’s hand in” means staying current. “To grease someone’s palm” is to attempt bribery. “To put your hands together” is to applaud, and “to hand on the torch” is to do something like I’m attempting here. If matters are “in hand,” they are under control, a “handout” is a gift, an “old hand” is a professional, “hands-on” experience is not theoretical, a “glad hand” may be an insincere reception, and a “right-hand man” is a key assistant, male or female.

A medieval European legend held that one could recognize future saints because they refused to suckle at the left breast. The Bible and hence the Church’s right-hand bias probably gave rise to the impossible-to-prove assertion that all popes have been right-handed.

Indeed, the first unequivocal southpaw in the White House was George H. W. Bush, elected in 1986. It’s true that James Garfield, elected in 1880, could write Latin and Greek simultaneously with either hand, but his public-relations people surely emphasized that he was ambidextrous, not left-handed, to lessen the stigma.

Leonardo da Vinci was also a lefty but, like many, he masked that fact by subduing his right hand. One biographer believes that the Italian master drew in his notebooks with his right and simultaneously annotated his sketches with his left. Slightly more believable is John Milton’s claim that he wrote poetry with his right hand and theological tracts with his left, but not at the same time. And that was centuries before doctors began telling us that by brushing our teeth with alternating hands we could ward off dementia.

This dental-mental item reminds me that “ambidextrous” literally means having two right hands, not two hands equally skilled. I was going to say “adroit,” but that means “to the right,” which might offend left-handers. In 1995, the Oxford University Press published the New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version omitting all references to “the right hand of God” as well as those damned goats on God’s left.

While Victor R. Gold, the inoffensive editor, was at it, he could have done us all a favor by introducing dextrosinistrous, a neologism to replace “ambidextrous” that I’ve been hawking for years (with only a few browbeaten student takers). This word, like Franklin’s lightning rod, is offered gratis to humanity. It should not be confused with dextrosinistral, which refers to one born left-handed who has learned to “write right.” That phrase, incidentally, alludes to the line my father used to teach me left from right: “Your right hand is the one you write with.” For years, though, I had to wriggle my hands out of sight of the person giving me directions to be sure I was turning as directed.

As you may have guessed by now, I come from a family of interesting hands. My paternal grandfather lost his right thumb in a threshing accident when he was 16. The loss, however, did not stop him from pitching in a semi-pro baseball league in central Illinois, but it did hamper his rise in the Masonic brotherhood. Indeed, it excluded him altogether. Because he could not master the Masonic handshake, he was blackballed. His son tried to join the Masons on his father’s unbegrudging advice but, crawling about blindfolded in his underwear on an electrified carpet was more humiliation than this career army officer could tolerate. After reaching the thirty-second degree, you might say he froze.

On my wife’s side of the family, most of whom still live in Germany, there was sweet-natured Mina Barmwater, who, when she was twenty-something, had her palm read at a carnival. The palmist, however, was more interested in the back of her hands where the veins formed a distinct “H.” Naturally this meant that Mina was destined to become a “Heiler” or healer. Medical school was financially out of the question, but herbal healing was a perfect fit. Through World War II when the apothecaries were often empty, people in the Lübeck area placed their ailing children in Mina’s capable hands.

Mina’s eldest grandson, my wife’s older brother, has the strongest hands I’ve ever shaken. Like hard salami, Rolf’s fingers are so stout he can jam his right index finger through as many as six cardboard beer coasters in one downward thrust with no ill effects. But the most interesting hands in the family belong to Ilse Barmwater, my sainted mother-in-law. While an elementary-school student in the 1920’s, Ilse’s left hand was beaten with a ruler until she wrote with her right. These teachers weren’t Nazis, mind you, but they represented the rootstock that those madmen later tapped. Thanks to her bullies, Ilse wrote with her right hand for 70 years though she privately peeled potatoes with her left. When Alzheimer’s seized her eighty-three-year-old brain, the left-hand dominance reappeared, like Jesus from the tomb, and for as long as she was able, she fed herself as nature intended.

As alluded to earlier (in my last column), the human gender split is very close to 50/50, but for a variety of poorly understood reasons, 90% or more of us are right-handed. Some think that we are evolving to a point when all of us will be “adroit.” Before that time arrives, remember that infants are born with their fists clenched but, if we learn our life lessons properly, we die with them open. Since you cannot shake hands with a fist of either persuasion, when East and West, right and left, finally meet, prepare for a handshake heard round the world.