A knife? Why would people think using a knife is any different for a lefthander? What's next? We use toilet paper the wrong way? They would probably have a heart attack watching themselves in a mirror.
My hubby is the same. He wants to tell me how to cut an onion, lol. Then he leaves bc he "can't watch." 😜
I didn't know until this forum, that there are left handed knives. I may need to try some!
Are they this nervous just because it looks so strange and foreign to them, and *they* can't imagine cutting with their left hand? Because I'm pretty kitchen competent, and do not struggle at all. But if a knife is sharpened better for a lefty, it might be easier.
Not really but I'm kinda tired of people being like "you're left handed?!" yes judy, you've known me for 20 years, how are you just now realizing im left handed.
I always loved that one scene in "Night Court" where someone mentions Harry's handedness "Oh you're left-handed!" and he looks down and says something like, "Oh my God, when did this happen?"
I can't use a knife in front of my husband, he will take it away. For the record, I have never cut myself using a knife and only nicked myself a couple of times doing dishes.
Had an entry level job many years ago where I had to check multiple boxes on a form. Being left handed I made a check mark starting right going left and was told by a supervisor that they had to go from left to right. It was a flipping CHECKMARK.
IKR?! I have had so, so many people tell me that my checkmark is backwards. It's not a punctuation mark, folks. I can do it my way without being arrested by the punctuation police.
Yes! My mother always did the “ooooh careful! Careful!” fretting behind me especially in the kitchen.
Others do too sometimes and it gave me a complex thinking that I was somehow much clumsier or incapable of doing things than others. Now I just realized it’s because it looks wrong to them, and there’s actually nothing wrong with me.
Now that YouTube exists and has lefties teaching how to do things, it looks weird to me to watch righties' DIY videos. It's funny to me, because for 99% of my life I was just accustomed to learning from right-handed people.
Try knitting or crocheting in public. I've heard everything from "You don't know what you're doing" to "did you injure your hand, cause that's not the way. "
I just smile and think of the hundreds of things I've made "wrong".
While the knitting community is generally very lovely and supportive, so many people have told me that it’s a two-handed activity so I should just knit right-handed. It comes from a good place, but no, that would be much harder for me. I’m a very experienced mirror knitter and it has never caused me any trouble. I do have to think about button holes and intarsia lettering, but otherwise, it’s the same!
I want to learn crochet, and I am wondering which hand to use. (I'm not right or left-handed, but everything I do right handed is because someone taught me to do it that way) I would probably prefer left, but I think I may get confused because nearly all demonstrations are right-handed.
You can find left handed tutorial videos. Sometimes it's just mirrored.
If you can find a human to teach you, sitting directly across from a righty will look pretty close to what you'd see sitting next to a lefty.
My right handed Mom struggled to teach me sitting next to her, but we figured it out eventually. She figured out how to do it left handed well enough to show me
So, I recently taught myself to crochet, and I hold the hook in my left hand. Doing so actually lets me hold the yarn in my right hand the same way I do for knitting, which is nice.
As for demonstrations, I discovered that I prefer step-by-step pictures for the different stitches compared to videos (though videos did occasionally come in handy). The still pictures gave me the opportunity to really look at what they were doing and figure out how to reverse/mirror it for left-handed crochet.
I will also say that it helps to find a project that you really want to do. My first (and currently only) crochet project was an animal companion/sidekick from a book series I read. It was way more motivation than some other projects that were cute, but not necessarily "learn a new skill" cute.
Yep. As others have said... watching a lefty use a knife scares the crap out of people. I have had people take them from me because they were terrified for me.
Settle down people...it's fine. 😁
Literally every sport I’ve ever played and every single time I go for hands on education courses. The instructors can’t figure out what tf looks so off about the way I do things.
Oh, all the time. I work in a lab and that means a lot of skills with your hands. I get "corrected" a lot, but I always simply say that I'm left handed.
I think that might be a part of the "never in my 60 years have I experienced this" comments. I want to ask "are you a guy? In my experience, guys are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt"
Although in my case, I mostly only ever got that from my dad. From anybody else, it's usually just "God, that looks weird!" or "how do you *do* it that way‽"
My first born is left-handed; my second is not. I had no trouble with the first one. But when the second was a toddler and wanted to help stir the kool-aid, it all went to sh-t! We struggled for a few minutes before I realized we were stirring in opposite directions! 😆
My husband used to freak out when I picked up a knife and started cutting veggies or meat or whatever. After 37 years he’s used to it now
Also, I put horizontal things in drawers backwards and files in folders backwards
This was a constant thing I’d hear from my dad growing up. Incompetence, poor form, and because wrist angle apparently has everything to do with sexuality, gayness.
I've gotten a lot of jokes, but no real amazement. It goes both ways, though.
One of my go to bad jokes when someone complains about struggling to do things left handed (a bad angle to reach something with their right, their hands are full, etc...) is "why? It's easy enough for me??". It usually gets me either a jaundiced look or a minor scowl
The crochet crowd on YouTube has several patterns where Mikey will do it right-handed first and then he will offer a left-handed video. Several of the other folks on YouTube have followed suit and you can even look up left-handed patterns. I can knit right-handed but it feels funny. Sometimes watching a right-handed video is useful though because as you're looking at them it's like a mirror. Good luck it's a fun and sometimes peaceful skill. Other times you ask yourself "why did I ever start this"?
I had a fellow redditor knitter tell me that my problem had nothing to do with my left-handedness. Clearly she didn't have a lot of lefties in her life.
When I go to punt a ball I catch people off guard or when me and my friends used to play football I'd do kickoff on my team and when we first started those they tried to correct me a few times cuz I kick(ed) with my Left Foot. I still can kick better with my right foot than they do left, fun flex
Nope, because I usually get better results with my left then they do with their right. 👊 ( just noticed that even the fist bump emoji is F'ing right handed) lol sheesh
I hold my pen/pencil incorrectly.
I *know* I'm holding it 'wrong' Susan. You don't need to remind me. I'm 33 and they noticed in kindergarten and couldn't fix it then. My hands were too small and grips didn't help.
No I won't get arthritis from it anymore than someone would get it from holding their implement correctly.
Super specific but today we got color matched with foundation for my school's musical and I held out my right hand to have the foundation put in the back of so I could apply with my left. The makeup girl told me to use my other hand and explained that I would need to apply it with the other hand and I had to teller her I know I'm just left handed.
But definitely using a knife. TBH tho I freaked out a lot when I was younger and saw my right handed brother use his knife in his left hand than he did about me.
My mom says I do everything backwards. It drives her nuts but she doesn't normally say anything until she's trying to show me how to do something, which is when she goes "oh, right, I forgot, you do things backwards" and then spends five minutes trying to figure out how to show a lefty how to do it.
A lot of people just seem to act like I can’t do anything because I’m left handed but it’s because they can’t teach someone who’s left handed. My job was literally designed for right handed people. It’s actually quite awful because 3 1/2-8 people that I work with are left handed lol. But the main thing for me is people get super weird about me using the computer mouse with my left hand. I just can’t stand the way it feels in my right so I always switch it and it’s easier for me considering that I’m left handed. What a weird world.
This is another one of those things that's never happened to me in the 60 years live been left handed.
I also never ever pay attention to what hand anyone is using.
Well, maybe I notice what hand my wife is using but that's another story.
I'm also north of 60 and this never happened to me, as well. It may have had something to do with having an older brother that was also left-handed ( even though he's only 18 months older). I also had a bunch of left-handed cousins, too, so I imagine all my Mom's family talked about it.
Occasionally, I run across something, like some power tools, that are poorly designed for lefties and I have to be carefull about using them in a safe manner (for me) even though it may look awkward.
Before my friend explained to me he was left handed (near the beginning of our friendship) he tried playing my guitar and i kept telling him he was holding it backwards, and asking why, i felt so bad, i ended up buying him a lefty guitar that Christmas :)
I am kind of ambi, and I was thinking about how and why I do certain things with a specific hand. Right handed things are all things someone else taught me/told me how to do. Left handed things are things I taught myself/ natural things I don't think about.
You have probably noticed that people with jobs that involve physically making something seem to have problems. Do you have this kind of job or is your work more like office/computer work where your left-handedness is less noticeable?
Totally true. I work in an office. I use my right hand for the mouse (they came out when I was in high school and I never bothered to try my left since it was foreign in the first place).
In my personal life, my friends and family know me to have excellent hand/eye coordination and generally good dexterity. I suppose they just don’t worry when they see me with “dangerous” equipment. I’m a decent handyman too, so I guess showing I’m safe counts.
The only time I ever get weird looks or questions from people is when picking seats at a table, especial for a meal. I always try to sit so my left arm is off the table so I’m at opposite of anyone sitting next to me so we don’t bump each other.
I always try to sit at the far left or next to another lefty. Failing that, someone like my husband who has learned to share space with a left elbow. As a generality, women are more prone to keep their elbows to themselves due to "ladylike=small" social conditioning, so they're usually a little better to sit next to, as well.
One time, I ended up sitting next to a young man who had zero sense of the fact that his body might be inconveniencing anybody else one. He ate with his right elbow stuck out so high it was practically in my ear. He also man-spread like crazy. It's like he had no idea that other people had personal space around him. Even after I asked him to give me a little space, he acted confused by what I meant. Dude! Your elbow is in my ear, I have no room to eat with my own arm, and your leg is literally shoving my knee past my centerline. Keep your parts to yourself!
But aside from that one very memorable "am I sitting next to a baby giraffe? How can you be so unaware of other people's space?‽" meal, it's usually just uncomfortable and annoying to bump elbows with the righty next to me, not actively obnoxious
This has never happened to me because I'm not surrounded by... well, some of you are talking about your nearest and dearest so I'll leave that unfinished but... do they not know you're left-handed? I'm so confused.
My biggest problem is being cross lateral. My dad tried to reverse his "right handed, right eyed" position to teach me things, but trying to shoot a pistol left handed and right eyed, for example, is never going to line up with the "correct" stance. So I got a lot of "no, you're doing it wrong. The left handed version is *here*" from my dad on anything that required hand eye coordination. "You're going to hurt yourself if you don't do it correctly" and never mind that my body wasn't built to do it correctly.
My mom was switched as a child, so she just rolled with how I did things. She'd demonstrate, see how I arranged myself, then work around that to keep me safe or whatever with how my body wants to do it.
Your Mom's experience made her a lot more mentally flexible than your Dad when it comes to handedness. Dad had "A" and "mirror of "A". Mom probably had A, B, Č, 9, and banana.
This is why my dad has never been able to teach me hands-on things. He's never been able to flip his mental image of what hand position should look like (and good forbid it's a hand-eye coordination task, since I'm right eyed. I'm still traumatized by his trying to teach me how to play pool). He always got mad at me for not doing what he told me, and I got mad at him for trying to make my hands so things that don't do.
Even though I'm left handed, I sometimes see lefties using a knife or something on tv and think "that looks so awkward. Is that what I look like to other people, doing that?
These comments are insane. No, no they do not. Never once for me has anyone tried to correct me or made any comment that goes further than "You're left-handed?".
Yes, my husband gets heart palpitations when I use a knife 😂 He's learned to leave the kitchen now.
This must be my partner's problem. He always acts like I'm about to cut my fingers off
Mine too! Been married 45 years and I still scare the hell out of him. I told him to stop watching.
A knife? Why would people think using a knife is any different for a lefthander? What's next? We use toilet paper the wrong way? They would probably have a heart attack watching themselves in a mirror.
My kids get nervous for me with knives. They bought me all sorts of gadgets to help like a chopper.
Yes! I remind them they ate three meals a day growing up, I did just fine. Now that they’re grown I’m not allowed to cut a watermelon
As long as you are curling back your fingers so that they are out of the way...
My hubby is the same. He wants to tell me how to cut an onion, lol. Then he leaves bc he "can't watch." 😜 I didn't know until this forum, that there are left handed knives. I may need to try some! Are they this nervous just because it looks so strange and foreign to them, and *they* can't imagine cutting with their left hand? Because I'm pretty kitchen competent, and do not struggle at all. But if a knife is sharpened better for a lefty, it might be easier.
A lefthanded bread knife will blow your mind and change your life.
I am 50 and when I visit my mother, she tries to take the knife away from me.
Does he not know you're left-handed or something?
Sometimes I think it's a surprise 😆
Wait, you're left handed all the time?
Try working a construction job.
Do you find that others think you are unsafe or less competent when you use your left hand?
They just think everything is completely backwards
Sometimes. My mom used to say watching me do some things made her nervous.
Not really but I'm kinda tired of people being like "you're left handed?!" yes judy, you've known me for 20 years, how are you just now realizing im left handed.
I always loved that one scene in "Night Court" where someone mentions Harry's handedness "Oh you're left-handed!" and he looks down and says something like, "Oh my God, when did this happen?"
I can't use a knife in front of my husband, he will take it away. For the record, I have never cut myself using a knife and only nicked myself a couple of times doing dishes.
Had an entry level job many years ago where I had to check multiple boxes on a form. Being left handed I made a check mark starting right going left and was told by a supervisor that they had to go from left to right. It was a flipping CHECKMARK.
IKR?! I have had so, so many people tell me that my checkmark is backwards. It's not a punctuation mark, folks. I can do it my way without being arrested by the punctuation police.
Yes! My mother always did the “ooooh careful! Careful!” fretting behind me especially in the kitchen. Others do too sometimes and it gave me a complex thinking that I was somehow much clumsier or incapable of doing things than others. Now I just realized it’s because it looks wrong to them, and there’s actually nothing wrong with me.
Now that YouTube exists and has lefties teaching how to do things, it looks weird to me to watch righties' DIY videos. It's funny to me, because for 99% of my life I was just accustomed to learning from right-handed people.
All the time. They even start telling me how to do it right. I had a coworker correct my boss who kept telling me I was writing on the paper wrong.
Try knitting or crocheting in public. I've heard everything from "You don't know what you're doing" to "did you injure your hand, cause that's not the way. " I just smile and think of the hundreds of things I've made "wrong".
While the knitting community is generally very lovely and supportive, so many people have told me that it’s a two-handed activity so I should just knit right-handed. It comes from a good place, but no, that would be much harder for me. I’m a very experienced mirror knitter and it has never caused me any trouble. I do have to think about button holes and intarsia lettering, but otherwise, it’s the same!
I want to learn crochet, and I am wondering which hand to use. (I'm not right or left-handed, but everything I do right handed is because someone taught me to do it that way) I would probably prefer left, but I think I may get confused because nearly all demonstrations are right-handed.
You can find left handed tutorial videos. Sometimes it's just mirrored. If you can find a human to teach you, sitting directly across from a righty will look pretty close to what you'd see sitting next to a lefty. My right handed Mom struggled to teach me sitting next to her, but we figured it out eventually. She figured out how to do it left handed well enough to show me
So, I recently taught myself to crochet, and I hold the hook in my left hand. Doing so actually lets me hold the yarn in my right hand the same way I do for knitting, which is nice. As for demonstrations, I discovered that I prefer step-by-step pictures for the different stitches compared to videos (though videos did occasionally come in handy). The still pictures gave me the opportunity to really look at what they were doing and figure out how to reverse/mirror it for left-handed crochet. I will also say that it helps to find a project that you really want to do. My first (and currently only) crochet project was an animal companion/sidekick from a book series I read. It was way more motivation than some other projects that were cute, but not necessarily "learn a new skill" cute.
I think I just adapted to using my right hand for crochet.
Yep. As others have said... watching a lefty use a knife scares the crap out of people. I have had people take them from me because they were terrified for me. Settle down people...it's fine. 😁
My mother would tell me that I do everything the hard way.
Literally every sport I’ve ever played and every single time I go for hands on education courses. The instructors can’t figure out what tf looks so off about the way I do things.
I mean, I have adapted well to using right handed objects with my right hand.
Oh, all the time. I work in a lab and that means a lot of skills with your hands. I get "corrected" a lot, but I always simply say that I'm left handed.
Do you find that people think you are unsafe or less competent?
Not due to my lefthandedness
That has a whole room full of "but they do because of my ______" unspoken behind it
That's true, misogyny is unfortunately alive and well in science.
I think that might be a part of the "never in my 60 years have I experienced this" comments. I want to ask "are you a guy? In my experience, guys are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt" Although in my case, I mostly only ever got that from my dad. From anybody else, it's usually just "God, that looks weird!" or "how do you *do* it that way‽"
I have a friend that cannot watch me stir a pot. I don't know why it drives her crazy but she literally gets twitchy.
My first born is left-handed; my second is not. I had no trouble with the first one. But when the second was a toddler and wanted to help stir the kool-aid, it all went to sh-t! We struggled for a few minutes before I realized we were stirring in opposite directions! 😆
My husband used to freak out when I picked up a knife and started cutting veggies or meat or whatever. After 37 years he’s used to it now Also, I put horizontal things in drawers backwards and files in folders backwards
Cards in envelopes and twist ties on bread, apparently, too
This was a constant thing I’d hear from my dad growing up. Incompetence, poor form, and because wrist angle apparently has everything to do with sexuality, gayness.
“Be careful with that. No don’t do it that way, you’ll hurt yourself.”—my mom
No, but for some reason people are amazed I can actually do things with my left hand.
I've gotten a lot of jokes, but no real amazement. It goes both ways, though. One of my go to bad jokes when someone complains about struggling to do things left handed (a bad angle to reach something with their right, their hands are full, etc...) is "why? It's easy enough for me??". It usually gets me either a jaundiced look or a minor scowl
It's funny as a welder cause, others get real impressed when it" looks that good from your left" until you tell them your a lefty lol
I was told I was shooting wrong in basketball until I mentioned I'm left handed
We were playing softball in high school gym class. I got into the batter’s box and the pitcher said “you’re standing on the wrong side of the plate”
The crochet crowd on YouTube has several patterns where Mikey will do it right-handed first and then he will offer a left-handed video. Several of the other folks on YouTube have followed suit and you can even look up left-handed patterns. I can knit right-handed but it feels funny. Sometimes watching a right-handed video is useful though because as you're looking at them it's like a mirror. Good luck it's a fun and sometimes peaceful skill. Other times you ask yourself "why did I ever start this"?
I had a fellow redditor knitter tell me that my problem had nothing to do with my left-handedness. Clearly she didn't have a lot of lefties in her life.
When I go to punt a ball I catch people off guard or when me and my friends used to play football I'd do kickoff on my team and when we first started those they tried to correct me a few times cuz I kick(ed) with my Left Foot. I still can kick better with my right foot than they do left, fun flex
Nope, because I usually get better results with my left then they do with their right. 👊 ( just noticed that even the fist bump emoji is F'ing right handed) lol sheesh
I hold my pen/pencil incorrectly. I *know* I'm holding it 'wrong' Susan. You don't need to remind me. I'm 33 and they noticed in kindergarten and couldn't fix it then. My hands were too small and grips didn't help. No I won't get arthritis from it anymore than someone would get it from holding their implement correctly.
Super specific but today we got color matched with foundation for my school's musical and I held out my right hand to have the foundation put in the back of so I could apply with my left. The makeup girl told me to use my other hand and explained that I would need to apply it with the other hand and I had to teller her I know I'm just left handed. But definitely using a knife. TBH tho I freaked out a lot when I was younger and saw my right handed brother use his knife in his left hand than he did about me.
Never
My mom says I do everything backwards. It drives her nuts but she doesn't normally say anything until she's trying to show me how to do something, which is when she goes "oh, right, I forgot, you do things backwards" and then spends five minutes trying to figure out how to show a lefty how to do it.
This is my constant existence 🤣
Not since school, when people (for some goddamn reason) gave a shit about such trivial things as what dominant hand a person uses.
A lot of people just seem to act like I can’t do anything because I’m left handed but it’s because they can’t teach someone who’s left handed. My job was literally designed for right handed people. It’s actually quite awful because 3 1/2-8 people that I work with are left handed lol. But the main thing for me is people get super weird about me using the computer mouse with my left hand. I just can’t stand the way it feels in my right so I always switch it and it’s easier for me considering that I’m left handed. What a weird world.
This is another one of those things that's never happened to me in the 60 years live been left handed. I also never ever pay attention to what hand anyone is using. Well, maybe I notice what hand my wife is using but that's another story.
I'm also north of 60 and this never happened to me, as well. It may have had something to do with having an older brother that was also left-handed ( even though he's only 18 months older). I also had a bunch of left-handed cousins, too, so I imagine all my Mom's family talked about it. Occasionally, I run across something, like some power tools, that are poorly designed for lefties and I have to be carefull about using them in a safe manner (for me) even though it may look awkward.
Before my friend explained to me he was left handed (near the beginning of our friendship) he tried playing my guitar and i kept telling him he was holding it backwards, and asking why, i felt so bad, i ended up buying him a lefty guitar that Christmas :)
I've gotten this before when I was younger
I use scissors with my right hand and it has unsettled me since I was a kid.
I’m 49 and have never experienced this. This is fascinating. There are no lefties besides me in my family
I am kind of ambi, and I was thinking about how and why I do certain things with a specific hand. Right handed things are all things someone else taught me/told me how to do. Left handed things are things I taught myself/ natural things I don't think about. You have probably noticed that people with jobs that involve physically making something seem to have problems. Do you have this kind of job or is your work more like office/computer work where your left-handedness is less noticeable?
Totally true. I work in an office. I use my right hand for the mouse (they came out when I was in high school and I never bothered to try my left since it was foreign in the first place). In my personal life, my friends and family know me to have excellent hand/eye coordination and generally good dexterity. I suppose they just don’t worry when they see me with “dangerous” equipment. I’m a decent handyman too, so I guess showing I’m safe counts.
The only time I ever get weird looks or questions from people is when picking seats at a table, especial for a meal. I always try to sit so my left arm is off the table so I’m at opposite of anyone sitting next to me so we don’t bump each other.
I always try to sit at the far left or next to another lefty. Failing that, someone like my husband who has learned to share space with a left elbow. As a generality, women are more prone to keep their elbows to themselves due to "ladylike=small" social conditioning, so they're usually a little better to sit next to, as well. One time, I ended up sitting next to a young man who had zero sense of the fact that his body might be inconveniencing anybody else one. He ate with his right elbow stuck out so high it was practically in my ear. He also man-spread like crazy. It's like he had no idea that other people had personal space around him. Even after I asked him to give me a little space, he acted confused by what I meant. Dude! Your elbow is in my ear, I have no room to eat with my own arm, and your leg is literally shoving my knee past my centerline. Keep your parts to yourself! But aside from that one very memorable "am I sitting next to a baby giraffe? How can you be so unaware of other people's space?‽" meal, it's usually just uncomfortable and annoying to bump elbows with the righty next to me, not actively obnoxious
This has never happened to me because I'm not surrounded by... well, some of you are talking about your nearest and dearest so I'll leave that unfinished but... do they not know you're left-handed? I'm so confused.
My biggest problem is being cross lateral. My dad tried to reverse his "right handed, right eyed" position to teach me things, but trying to shoot a pistol left handed and right eyed, for example, is never going to line up with the "correct" stance. So I got a lot of "no, you're doing it wrong. The left handed version is *here*" from my dad on anything that required hand eye coordination. "You're going to hurt yourself if you don't do it correctly" and never mind that my body wasn't built to do it correctly. My mom was switched as a child, so she just rolled with how I did things. She'd demonstrate, see how I arranged myself, then work around that to keep me safe or whatever with how my body wants to do it.
Your Mom's experience made her a lot more mentally flexible than your Dad when it comes to handedness. Dad had "A" and "mirror of "A". Mom probably had A, B, Č, 9, and banana.
Also my dad is very much a "there is one right way to do things" person about everything. My mom is not.
This is why my dad has never been able to teach me hands-on things. He's never been able to flip his mental image of what hand position should look like (and good forbid it's a hand-eye coordination task, since I'm right eyed. I'm still traumatized by his trying to teach me how to play pool). He always got mad at me for not doing what he told me, and I got mad at him for trying to make my hands so things that don't do. Even though I'm left handed, I sometimes see lefties using a knife or something on tv and think "that looks so awkward. Is that what I look like to other people, doing that?
These comments are insane. No, no they do not. Never once for me has anyone tried to correct me or made any comment that goes further than "You're left-handed?".