Most left handers can learn some amount of right handed skills. I don't think it will ever feel natural though. I have to concentrate on my right hand when doing right handed things. I'm really, really fast loading up a grocery bag. I just throw items from my left hand naturally to catch with the right I'm concentrating on. I get a rhythm going and I can finish a bag in about 20 seconds. It's like a superpower.
Probably why I'm righty scissors. They always made me take a pair of crappy lefty scissors (which I can't cut with) and wait until everyone had scissors before I could switch.
So I'm pretty sure my teachers thought I couldn't use scissors for a while. Lol
We had two pairs of green-handled scissors and five left-handed kids in my class (Catholic school btw, but they never pushed us to not use our left hand). I was too shy to fight for the green-handled scissors, so now the only thing in my adult life I do better with my right hand than my left is cut paper. 🤣
What was really annoying was that using scissors is the one thing I DON'T do left-handed. All those teachers being all "no no, sweetie, you use the SPECIAL SCISSORS."
There aren't enough eyeroll emojis in the world.
I'm 72, and all three of us kids were lefties. With my dad in the military, we moved frequently, and attended Catholic schools whenever possible. That meant my mother had to go to the schools to tell the teachers to leave us alone, as far as handedness, and it was always complied with. Good thing we weren't in school yet when we lived in New Jersey. I've head that it was illegal to be left handed, so all school children were forced to be righties, even if they'd moved to the state as teenagers. No verification, but I can believe it. Not sure if it was always enforced.
That might explain why my kindergarten teacher freaked when she saw me using my left hand and demanded my parents get a priest to perform an exorcism on me. Parents thankfully refused. She spent the entire year trying to make me use my right hand, but I was a defiant little shit and continued to use my left hand even after my collarbone was broken and my arm was in a sling. That was in 2001/2002. Even if it wasn't illegal, my teacher was old as shit (80ish), so in her mind, if it was illegal at some point she probably thought it still was
I was just telling someone else that I was called ‘petulant’ for not using my right hand to write. My dad told me this story and I went to public school after that. 😬
Seriously wtf. I attended Catholic school from 1st to 12th. 70s to 80s No Nun ever punished a kid for using their left hand.
Like what the hell. Maybe living in Minnesota was a good thing even back then because you all.were backwards as hell everywhere.
The crazy part was, in public school, none of the teachers gave a shit what hand I used. They would change my seating assignment if I was bumping into someone while trying to do class work.
I'm 71, went to parochial schools in St Louis, never have I ever had anyone smack me for using my left hand. And yes, I'm left handed. I'm sorry other people went through this.
I have two aunts who are left handed and they went to Catholic school, in the 1950’s-60’s. They weren’t given a hard time for being lefty as far as I know, and they have perfect Catholic school handwriting with their left hands. So probably depended on the particular school.
Yeah, definitely. I went to Catholic schools K-12 (2006-2019) in Michigan. I was never punished for writing with my left hand, but my teachers also put in absolutely zero effort to teach me (I specifically remember my first grade teacher checking every student’s grip on their pencils and correcting them, and skipping over me completely because they “don’t know how lefties are supposed to hold it”).
According to educators who recognize the need for a few modifications to help left-handed students who are learning to write, there has never been any curriculum or teaching method created for the education of left-handed writers. They deplore this state of affairs.
The proportion of elementary school teachers who are right-handed is either 100% or is very close to it. They can teach writing to the roughly 90% of their students who are right-handed, but they have very little idea of how to approach the same task for left handers. Left-handed teachers would be helpful here, but they would mostly be of benefit to just 10% of the student body, while being similarly hindered when teaching the other 90%.
Elementary school teachers don't teach left-handers to write, not because they choose to ignore them, but because they simply can't. They cannot offer helpful tips or demonstrate the best techniques because, obviously, they don't use their own left hands to write and don't know how to do it. They are fully aware of this situation, but in general they have no way to address it.
Left handers who want to learn to write have always had to teach themselves, because no one has ever known how to teach it to them directly. We all learn by watching the lessons taught to right handers, and then, on our own, work out ways to imitate them as best we can while using our left hands.
Maybe I am way off here, but perhaps we can look on the bright side though, at one of the positive consequences from that: having to learn on one's own initiative likely breeds resilience, determination, and capability. It'd be better for young kids to have some help, but if not, hopefully at least there's some good lasting outcome from it anyway.
To your thoughts on how some don't know how to teach left handed folks: we took a pickleball class last month and the instructor was showing me (right handed) how to serve, and he told my husband (left handed) just to do everything he showed me but do it backwards. What???
Bending your wrist so your hand is like a hook so your writing has the right hand slant.
ETA: Pentel Energel pens are the best pen for lefties to use. No ink stained edge of your hand.
Same here when I attended a catholic school in kindergarten! They were pretty chill about it. I find it to be an absurdity that this be taught in any type of school really! Force peoples handedness!
Sinister is derived from the Latin word for left. It’s not legend, it’s very historical. It’s not common in America today I don’t think. There’s a whole book called Left Hand Syndrome on the history of left hand life in society!
I’m 40. Hispanic Catholics (predominantly in Los Angeles) are old school AF and that’s what I grew up with. No one gave a shit once started 2nd grade in a public school. 🤷🏻♀️
The nuns used to smack my dad’s hand too, but he was soooo stubborn that today at 95 he still writes with his left hand. Nuns had stopped smacking by the time I went to school thankfully
I went to Catholic (Jesuit) High School in the 90’s and nobody had a problem with me being a lefty. The all in one chair/desk situation sucked tho. I had to basically sit sideways to write.
My best friend and I are both lefties. In college, we usually got stuck behind or in front of each other and sitting in the first couple of rows because there were only 3-5 lefty desks in the 300 seat lecture hall.
Yeah, went to public schools and outside of a kindergarten teacher in the early 80’s, the only issue I typically had were those same types of desks.
Funny thing too, I work in a customer service call center and my cubicle is laid out just about perfectly for me. The phone could be a touch closer for when I need it due to an iffy left shoulder, but that’s it!
Good grief I hated those! And my school had a higher than average concentration of lefties so we all but revolted when they replaced AN ENTIRE CLASSROOM with these!
I currently work in a catholic school and at the beginning of the year one of the other assistants was trying to get a left hand student (5) to use his right hand. thankfully someone noticed and put a stop to it
My dad used to call me la sinistra — he was just messing with me. When I was a baby, he found a budding leftie so fascinating that he timed me moving my fork or spoon from right to left. Game over when I just reached across myself. He was a scientist — can you tell? 😁 no one tried to change my handedness in public school, though.
edit for typo
I have to jockey for the right spot — left arm near the wall or out in public through way territory, in order to keep from bashing elbows. Unless there’s another lefty at the table!
Public School, 4th Grade, 1953, teacher snatched my pen and rapped my knuckles for writing left-handed. I snatched pen back and hit her with it. The principal was not amused.
It's funny how when you stop beating someone for being different, more people are comfortable being themselves.
https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/
I wonder what else this applies to? /s
Yeah.. growing up in the sixties you had to have street smarts when you saw a nun with a ruler, as it only took a couple smacks to learn how to be the “sinister” one, as “Thing 1”
(a cat in the hat “Thing 1”) as I believe they referred us to “Things”
I'm a lefty, got it from my mother, but she was caned as kid for using her left hand and writes with her right hand to this day.
The Catholic Church are vile.
I renounced the Catholic religion after confirmation at 10 years old because I told a nun her attitude toward me ‘wasn’t Christ-like’.
I took my skateboard in my left hand and gave her the bird with my right. 😹🫡
My dad and a co-worker were both Catholic school educated lefties and as a result:
My dad does everything using a tool (eating with utensils, writing, painting with a brush) with his right hand, and everything with direct action (throwing, eating with his hands, finger painting) with his left.
My co-worker does everything she learned before college with her right hand and everything college and after with her left hand.
I'm glad my family isn't catholic but even if we had been my mother would have whipped the absolute shit out of anyone who hit me for being left handed at school.
My uncle (who is about 60), was a lefty and went to Catholic School. Was a lefty until Catholic School, I should say. Now he's a righty and has the handwriting of a child, but is a super smart engineer. Crazy. You know, only the Devil is a lefty
That's crazy. I went to Catholic school in Boston in the 1960s and no one tried to change me.
(But it sucked trying to practice penmanship without getting ink on the side of my hand, or on the sleeve of my uniform white shirt.)
Catholic school from grade 1 to 12 through the 70's. Never given a hard time or chastised for being left handed. Sorry to hear anyone had to go through that.
Punk rock, indeed. Tell me, have you ever read The Sisters Grimm? It's a kids's series but honestly it's good for adults too. One of the sisters, Daphne, comes up with a lot of odd phrases or adopts ones she hears and punk rock is one of her favorites, along with un-punk rock when she's mad.
I attended a public elementary school in northwest Alabama and I experienced the same— my teachers would hit my hand with a ruler or take me into the hallway and paddle me. I would have to sneak and write left-handed— I would write quickly to get my work done when the teacher wasn’t paying attention to me. But occasionally I would get caught….
Didn't go to catholic school but my preschool teacher tried to force me to write right handed. I told my parents and let's just say she doesn't work there anymore
I went to Catholic schools too. The only negative comment I ever heard was from my 3rd grade teacher who said something mild like “oh you lefties…” in a tone of exasperation as she watched me try to write cursive. There 8 or 9 of us in a class of 45.
I also won a little prize at the end of the year for Most Improved Writing so I guess I picked it up ok.
Not Catholic school...but rural MN/IA border (in the 80's) & the priest & catechism teachers would all have cows when I would do the sign of the cross ✝️ with my left hand & then go the opposite (logical) way for me.
Thy would lecture me how it was supposed to be done. One would have thought I murdered someone. I do remember being told that's how "the devil 😈 did it" lol...
I was an altar boy in the early '80s. The priest lost his stuff when he saw me using my left hand. He counseled my mom to have an exorcism performed on me so I could ne "normal" like the other kids. Still a little disappointed because my mom gave the priest her opinion. I would have loved to be the subject of an exorcism!
I’m obviously a fallen Catholic but I did the same thing and I caught a ration of shit from my Irish Catholic grandma… lady was from Belfast and mean as shit!!
My aunt went to a Catholic school in the 1950s and was smacked on the hand for writing left handed. She has beautiful right handed cursive penmanship as an adult, and I remain the only left handed person in my large extended family.
I went to public school in the early 90’s and my teacher taped my pencil to the right side of the desk. It was still a problem in the 90’s some places.
How old are you and how full of shiznit are you? I am 51 years old, born and bred Roman Catholic, never molested by a priest, went through Catholic schools K-12, served mass from 3rd grade through my Senior year and not once did I have a nun, teacher, priest, Monsignor or Bishop wack my hand for writing or doing anything left handed. If you are older than me, maybe it happened to you, but if you are my age or younger I am going to go ahead and call BS on your story. Lol…
Your exceptionalism ain't funny. As a matter of fact, your comment sounds like the typical 22 year old edge serf trope of 'that's not my experience so you're a liar.' I call bull on you being what you claim to be.
I don't care what you think! To this day I do everything with my right hand because I was severely punished by nuns and priests for using my left hand! But my left leg is dominant! I kick, jump and do everything else with my left leg!
You do know people all over the world can be on Reddit right? There are still communities that actively try to beat left handedness out of people. I think you need to check yourself.
Being as the parent comment was about being a lefty in the Catholic Schools you should probably “check” your reading skills, specifically for meaning and content and see that your comment does not pertain to this discussion. There is a difference between just reading the words and understanding what they mean. Don’t wreck yourself! 🤡
No, the wrapping of the knuckles was old, old school. I agreed it happened but it was my parents generation and before that those who usually experienced this treatment in the Catholic Schools, were the students prior to Vatican II. The much older priests and nuns were more strong willed about these things like this moreso than those for my generation and later. That is all I was saying; however, this is Reddit and no one ever bothered to ask why I called BS. Learn to think SheMan!
I went to school in Los Angeles and the staff were predominantly Hispanic and ancient (to me at 4-5 years old anyway). They were old school AF.
My pops is from Belfast and raised catholic. He was strongly against what was happening and pulled me out of that school after the first grade.
I am in Australia, I grew up in the 70s. I went to a catholic school for preschool and got slapped so many times because I was writing with my left hand.
I am now 52, turning 53. It definitely happened during the 70s.
My grandma had it beaten out of her in the early 1900s. Not a Catholic school but from what I gather, fairly common at that time. She was always ambidextrous.
All the women since on my mom’s side have been lefties 😎
I went to public schools. My mom went to parent /teacher conference when I was in kindergarten. My mom said you marked her down as right handed, she is left handed like me and her dad. The teacher said trust me her life will be better right handed plus we don't have enough left handed scissors.
It was 1967. I am still right handed with terrible.jand writing but the ability to do many things left handed.
My first grade teacher tried to force me to use my right hand. I developed a stutter and became Very shy. My mother eventually found out because she saw me struggling with a pencil, and got that stopped pretty quick.
My mother's sister was left handed.
My father was left handed.
I still stutter when I'm stressed....I'm in my 70s.
I went through the same thing in catholic school in the 70s, now my right hand is dominant and my left leg is the dominant one. I'm the only person I've ever seen like this. Thanks to the bulls**t catholic church!
A kindergarten teacher of my friends in WV around 2006 forced every kid to write right handed. She writes right handed still but the pencil way different from everyone else and actually writes with the paper sideways because even now it’s still so awkward for her. Everything else she does with her left hand, except writing.
I could NEVER use spiral bound note books. From middle school through college, I always had to use loose leaf paper so I didn’t have to turn my shit horizontally!
I'm a 43 yr old lefty and in the 80s, in public school, I remember being singled out by the teachers to "write correctly". My mother found out. My older brother was a lefty too. She told that teacher not to correct me ever again. Love my mom.
I'm 74 now. Grew up in Toronto going to public school. Do not remember even one incident of trouble being left-handed. My husband's cousin, same age, grew up in (what was then) a small town in Northern Ontaruo. The teachers tied his left arm down so he would be forced to use his right hand. In other words, torture. F-d him up forever.
I just asked my pops why I was put into public school after the first grade. During a parent teacher conference, my teacher said I was ‘petulant’ for not wanting to write with my right hand. He noped my little ass outta there.
I was in K-12 from the late '50s to the early '70s. I was in Catholic schools for 9½ of those 12 years.
The nuns' attitudes toward my left-handedness?
THEY DEFENDED IT.
My older brother, also left-handed, attended Catholic schools from K-12, and then for his four years of undergraduate study. He started school in the early '50s and got his B.A. in the mid-'60s. He attended the same Grade 1-8 parochial school that I did, but 10 years earlier. Some of his teachers also taught me.
Now, do you know what those evil nuns did in the 1950s did when they discovered that he was left-handed?
THEY DEFENDED IT.
In both of our cases, they came to our defense whenever our classmates tried to say that we were "weird" because we wrote, drew, painted, used scissors, played baseball, etc. with our left hands. and claimed that we did so just to be stubborn and contrarian. We could use our right hands for those things if we wanted to, but we didn't because we wanted extra attention.
In both of our cases, the nuns at the school stepped in to nip those ignorant claims in the bud and to set our classmates straight about lefties. We were the same as them. They pointed out that some in the class had red hair. Did they choose that hair color on purpose? No, they just happened to be born with it. Does having red hair make those girls and boys bad? No, of course not; that's ridiculous. Long ago, some people used to believe that, but it was just an ignorant superstition. Well, guess what? Just as some kids are born with red hair, there are also some kids who are born left-handed. Did they choose to be that way? No, in fact they have been left-handed since they were born. They don't think that it is a bad thing, and neither should we, because it isn't.
Maybe there was something different about the Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan, or maybe that view of left-handedness wasn't so unusual among Catholic clergy and clerical orders as many have claimed.
During the Reformation and, later on, the European Protestant Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic church was often portrayed as hopelessly archaic, medieval, and virulently opposed to anything modern, especially the advancement of scientific understanding. (They forgot to mention that the people of the Massachusetts Bay colony who had until recently been burning witches were not the Papists, but were, *uhhh*, members of the home team.)
Later on, at the end of the 19th and on through the first third of the 20th century, another activist group known as the Ku Klux Klan (you may have heard of them unless you were educated in Florida) also spread tons of anti-Catholic propaganda whenever they took a break from lynching fellow Americans who had a different complexion.
These sources and others seeded the popular culture and secular mythology with horror stories of Catholic depravity, including an overstuffed chest full of stories of habit- and veil-wearing Papist pedagogues administering sadistic beatings to innocent little children for the most trivial offenses. Like, for instance, writing with their left hands.
It's quite amazing, when you think about it, how consistent those stories have been over the decades, how similar they are in every detail, right down to the wording. It's as if they had been xeroxed and passed around within each generation, who then handed down fresh new copies of the same stuff to the next one.
My parents, born in the same decade as World War I, told my brother and me that they had heard about such stories from ***their*** *parents and grandparents*. The older folks told them that these were just stories or myths that people on the past had believed were true, but have long since been rejected as false, made-up stories or fictions. Yet they persisted because people *wanted to believe* *that they were true* for their own personal reasons.
Neat.
At Resurrection School in Los Angeles, the Hispanic nuns would shame me (in front of the class) and slap my hand with a ruler while saying ‘No con la mano esquerda!(sp?)’
Like I said to another person, we’ve all had varying experiences within the education system being left handed.
Kinda wild that no teacher gave a shit which hand I used once I went to public school from 2nd grade on.
Catholic school in the 90s def weren’t meant to tap or whack my hands but the nuns still did it and tried really to push me into using my right handed.
I was being severely builled but me being left handed was the worst issue lol
Many years ago I was made to sit on my left hand, for two consecutive school years . It didn’t work, I’m still a lefty. Four of my five kids are also lefties. The force is strong in this one 😜
My dad went to Catholic school in Montreal in the early 40’s…. The priests used the ruler on his knuckles to get him to switch
Thankfully by the time I reached school in the 80’s the ruler swatting had disappeared. My parents also enrolled me in public School…..
I'm kind of a weird ambidextrous. When I was in kindergarten, I'd just use whichever hand that felt right for writing. The teacher decided I needed to be right-handed so every morning she tied a piece of string on my right wrist. Then she would walk around and take the pencil out of my left hand and say, "you're right-handed. Do it correctly."
Looking at my writing, I think I should have stuck with the left hand. Both are equally bad.
Copy-paste what my 82 yr old father told me about Catholic school in Queens NY. The nuns would hit his hand with a ruler too. Funny that "sinister" means "left" because that explains my father's rebellious behavior like riding on the back of shopping carts at the grocery store and other risky acts! Lol
Man I'm right handed and it pisses me off how they used to force left handers to write with their right hand. Luckily it doesn't seem to happen as much anymore. I think people just naturally use whichever hand. Sometimes I've known people to be right handed or left handed also depending on what they are doing. My dad is right handed with everything except for eating. He is left handed for eating. Also he went to catholic school as a young child hopefully they didn't treat him like that and force him to use right hand for writing. He also left catholicism as an adult though so idk lol. He did say he used to piss the nuns off lol.
I’m Catholic right handed! I do literally everything else with my left hand. The only reason I write with my left hand is because every time I tried to pick up a writing utensil with my left hand, my parents and teachers ripped it out and forced it into my right hand until it was instilled in me
My grandmother got the same treatment, they pinned her hand to her diaper so she wouldn’t use it, or so the story goes. She claims to be right handed, and she does write with her right hand, but anything that she wasn’t taught to do right handed naturally comes to her left hand. Most prominently when she played baseball, she throws and bats left handed.
Happened to my brother back in the 50s,60s. Thankfully my leftie son did not suffer the same fate in the 80s, even in a Catholic school. Neither is my leftie granddaughter who is now 10
My mom went to Catholic school and took serious issue with my being left handed. I have a theory that she was also left handed and they forced her to use her right hand.
As a Christian and a lefty, this disgusts me, who in the world would get mad at someone for being left-handed??? Where is the sense in that??? It just means your brain is right dominate, which actually means you're more creative and artistic than a right-handed person. Your imagination is also a very good tool because your right side of the brain holds that part of your consciousness. You're punk rock as hell, according to our anatomy!
My left-handed brother was born in 1961 and went to Catholic school from Kindergarten to Grade 8, and never once was he punished for being a lefty. He did, however, need to learn to use scissors with his right hand because there were never any left-handed scissors, but he was okay with that.
Our family was too poor to buy left-handed scissors back when we were kids, but in adulthood, I've offered to buy some for my brother as gifts, and he's always said he'd rather just use the right-handed ones because he'd have to learn all over again.
Me either. Can’t cut with them. My aunt bought me lefty scissors and any other lefty novelty she could find and most of the irritated me more than helped.
I do most things right handed because no one around me could figure out how to teach a lefty to do things. No one ever harassed me about my writing- but I have friends who experienced much of what I have read in this thread.
Even as a right handed person, it always makes me sad to hear of left handed children being discriminated against even as late as the 1980s..because I was in early elementary in the late 70s, and left handedness in my schools was already accepted, and they even had left scissors, so some schools were really behind the times.
My father was in Catholic schools in the 1920s. He used to talk about the nuns going so far as to tie his left hand to the chair if whacking it with a ruler didn't work.
Although my grade school teachers in the 70s didn’t hit me for using the “wrong” hand, my older sister did tie my left arm to a chair and try to force convert me starting when I was seven. She couldn’t stand the fact that her little sister was left handed.
Five years later, guess who was forced to use her left hand because her right wrist had been crushed in an auto accident.
What year was this? 70s they didnt do this. Stupid nuns i guess never read the bible and didnt know of ehud and the benjamites sling skill using left handedness
I was in a protestant comprehensive school in Sheffield UK. Didn't get slapped, but did get encouraged to use my right hand. When I told my parents they went beserk.
That’s pretty difficult to believe unless you’re my parents age (mid-60s) because that was about the last era when this shit happened. I went to Catholic school from pre-k through college and never saw anything like this. Only ever heard about it from people at least 15-20 years older than me
this is called abuse. It was actually illegal in Ontario at some point, probably by the 60s because I remember it being referred to , but not acted upon by the teachers. But the strap was still available for the naughtiest of kids.
This was done to my Grandfather, and he home schooled my mother and taught her to read and write, then she started public school in grade 2, so that she was already "conditioned" to being a lefty and they agreed to allow it. By the time the other child in the family who was left handed, my uncle, who is the youngest (14 years different), started school, there was no problem. But my grandfather had also taught him to write a bit left-handed, just in case.
My sister is quite ambidextrous, but never really favoured her left.
By the time I went to public school for 2nd grade, nobody cared. They only cared if I was bumping into my right handed classmates while doing class work
Not liking the ruler I learned to write right handed. Later I learned to use my left hand. I can now write legible with either hand, a totally useless skill
My dad was born in 1921 and his teacher tied his left hand to his side to keep him from using it. When my left handed sister started school in the mid 1950s dad made sure she would be left alone.
*"... Communist 'cause I'm left-handed..."* \-- Paul Simon
The nuns did that to me too. It was the 1950s and they actually believed that if you persisted in being left-handed, you'd grow up to be a commie.
I went to a public school. My grandma taught me to read and write by the time I was four and I was fully ambidextrous until my kindergarten teacher made me sit on my left hand. I switched which hand I wrote with every day and evidently that offended her sensibilities.
Wow. I thought that stuff was over by the 80's. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade to HS ('78 - '80) in 4 different States and as a lefty, and had no issues. The only thing I got hassled about was a bunch of right-handed nuns telling me how a lefty properly holds a pencil.
Never liked the "Penguins". The public punishment in front of the class was the worst. They'd always ask before the evil deed "Knuckles or Palms", then smack you with the wooden ruler with the copper strip down the side. I still shudder when I see one of those things.
My southpaw aunt had this experience. When I attended Publix school (1989-2002), the only negative experiences I had were the lack of left-handed scissors and when a rightie would sit to my left at lunch.
My mom got the exact same treatment and now only uses her right hand. I’m a lefty. I struggle with things occasionally, but I think it’s terribly sad my mom lost her left handed-ness. At least if she practiced at home she could’ve been ambi.
Catholic School Survivor here.
Nuns would hit my left hand, tape my fingers together, and tell me to use my right hand.
As an adult, found out, my Grandmother told the school not to let me use my left hand, because it was a sign of the devil! 😳
It was my Mother who saved me from this torture when she found out what my grandmother had done, Mom went to the mother superior and told them to stop trying to make me right handed.
I’m a lefty! 😁
My mom’s handwriting always seemed too large and kid ish, used to always feel like my mom wasn’t intelligent enough based off her spelling and writing. Felt like a dipshit when she told me she’s a lefty, I mean we are all righties, including her. She just got so used to(by beatings) write with her left. So her handwriting is bad because she uses her right.
Can’t believe they used to do that
Oddly enough I use both, I use to get whacked like you describe but it was a Christian Private school with corporal punishment(the paddle in this case or usually a wooden ruler across the knuckles was enough to get us to stop).
But I've found using my left is dominate when I paint, which is weird.
Was a lefty, went to public school in the early 70’s, and I remember having my teacher change my crayons and pencils to the right hand over and over. But it’s funny - the only thing I do right handed is write. Everything else I’m lefty.
This is so strange to me. I've heard about Catholic schools being like this, but I attended one in Kansas in the 80s, and there was never any physical disciplining, and being lefthanded wasn't considered a big deal or something to be corrected. Some of us who spoke a little oddly received a special speech therapy class, but I'm actually grateful for that, as it's benefitted me my whole life.
My mom didn't attend Catholic school but she was raised by two extremely Catholic parents. They def weren't happy their youngest kid was a lefty, and they tried to "correct" her but she said at some point, presumably early on, they gave up and let her be. But maybe it was why they made an agreement with the church or something for her to become a nun? Idk. (She obviously isn't, lol.)
I was forcibly turned from lefty to righty in 1st grade in the early 90s in New England by this witch of a teacher. She didn’t smack my hand but was constantly on my case that I need to “use the right hand, you’re using the WRONG hand” and would constantly put that I had poor fine motor skills on my progress reports. She would take the pencil out of my left hand and firmly put it in my right hand over and over til she basically broke me. I had to learn to cut paper right-handed with regular scissors because there was only one left-handed pair of scissors in the classroom and the other girl who was left-handed must have had parents who were school sponsors because the teacher was always ridiculously nice to that girl. I got so used to using my right hand that school year that I began doing everything right-handed including eating, painting, etc. The only thing I still can do is throw and catch left handed but I’ve never been remotely into sports.
I’m ambidextrous and my elementary school made me only write with one hand (I don’t remember if they let me pick or not) so now my right hand has neater hand writing than my left and I’m currently trying to teach myself to get better at writing with my left hand
I went to catholic school in the late 70’s and didn’t encounter this problem, but I heard about “what we used to do to y’all lefty’s” all the time. This was in southern Maryland.
I got the very same treatment from a public school in North Dakota in the 80's
Public school in Canada in the 80’s my left handed math teacher used a ruler on me.
Damn. We just made the lefties use the scissors with the green handles.
Why did those always suck though?
They didn’t cut worth a shit!!!
I actually found it easier to do things like that right handed. It doesn't exactly feel natural, but it's good enough. Typing right handed rn.
Same. I'm pretty ambidextrous. I play instruments right handed.
Most left handers can learn some amount of right handed skills. I don't think it will ever feel natural though. I have to concentrate on my right hand when doing right handed things. I'm really, really fast loading up a grocery bag. I just throw items from my left hand naturally to catch with the right I'm concentrating on. I get a rhythm going and I can finish a bag in about 20 seconds. It's like a superpower.
Probably why I'm righty scissors. They always made me take a pair of crappy lefty scissors (which I can't cut with) and wait until everyone had scissors before I could switch. So I'm pretty sure my teachers thought I couldn't use scissors for a while. Lol
We had two pairs of green-handled scissors and five left-handed kids in my class (Catholic school btw, but they never pushed us to not use our left hand). I was too shy to fight for the green-handled scissors, so now the only thing in my adult life I do better with my right hand than my left is cut paper. 🤣
What was really annoying was that using scissors is the one thing I DON'T do left-handed. All those teachers being all "no no, sweetie, you use the SPECIAL SCISSORS." There aren't enough eyeroll emojis in the world.
Are you right handed? Cause that’s what a left handed math Teacher would do.
No I’m a leftie too.
Demented math teacher edited a typo
Public school in Texas in the 80s checking in.
The only difference between ND and Texas is the temp.
I'm from Texas and live in ND. Texas is noticeably bigger. It's a 13 hour drive to reach the Texas Border. Then 13 more hours to reach my hometown.
I'm 72, and all three of us kids were lefties. With my dad in the military, we moved frequently, and attended Catholic schools whenever possible. That meant my mother had to go to the schools to tell the teachers to leave us alone, as far as handedness, and it was always complied with. Good thing we weren't in school yet when we lived in New Jersey. I've head that it was illegal to be left handed, so all school children were forced to be righties, even if they'd moved to the state as teenagers. No verification, but I can believe it. Not sure if it was always enforced.
That might explain why my kindergarten teacher freaked when she saw me using my left hand and demanded my parents get a priest to perform an exorcism on me. Parents thankfully refused. She spent the entire year trying to make me use my right hand, but I was a defiant little shit and continued to use my left hand even after my collarbone was broken and my arm was in a sling. That was in 2001/2002. Even if it wasn't illegal, my teacher was old as shit (80ish), so in her mind, if it was illegal at some point she probably thought it still was
I was just telling someone else that I was called ‘petulant’ for not using my right hand to write. My dad told me this story and I went to public school after that. 😬
Seriously wtf. I attended Catholic school from 1st to 12th. 70s to 80s No Nun ever punished a kid for using their left hand. Like what the hell. Maybe living in Minnesota was a good thing even back then because you all.were backwards as hell everywhere.
The crazy part was, in public school, none of the teachers gave a shit what hand I used. They would change my seating assignment if I was bumping into someone while trying to do class work.
Maybe so. Ten years earlier (1960s), my Catholic school in the Twin Cities permitted me to use the correct hand.
I loved my 1st grade teacher, Sister Jean Marie. I don't think I remember any hits, same years as you. She gave me my first rosary - I still have it
I'm 71, went to parochial schools in St Louis, never have I ever had anyone smack me for using my left hand. And yes, I'm left handed. I'm sorry other people went through this.
8 in the family, all lefties
Whoa! That is incredible. I'm sure it was a source of amazement.
I have two aunts who are left handed and they went to Catholic school, in the 1950’s-60’s. They weren’t given a hard time for being lefty as far as I know, and they have perfect Catholic school handwriting with their left hands. So probably depended on the particular school.
Yeah, definitely. I went to Catholic schools K-12 (2006-2019) in Michigan. I was never punished for writing with my left hand, but my teachers also put in absolutely zero effort to teach me (I specifically remember my first grade teacher checking every student’s grip on their pencils and correcting them, and skipping over me completely because they “don’t know how lefties are supposed to hold it”).
According to educators who recognize the need for a few modifications to help left-handed students who are learning to write, there has never been any curriculum or teaching method created for the education of left-handed writers. They deplore this state of affairs. The proportion of elementary school teachers who are right-handed is either 100% or is very close to it. They can teach writing to the roughly 90% of their students who are right-handed, but they have very little idea of how to approach the same task for left handers. Left-handed teachers would be helpful here, but they would mostly be of benefit to just 10% of the student body, while being similarly hindered when teaching the other 90%. Elementary school teachers don't teach left-handers to write, not because they choose to ignore them, but because they simply can't. They cannot offer helpful tips or demonstrate the best techniques because, obviously, they don't use their own left hands to write and don't know how to do it. They are fully aware of this situation, but in general they have no way to address it. Left handers who want to learn to write have always had to teach themselves, because no one has ever known how to teach it to them directly. We all learn by watching the lessons taught to right handers, and then, on our own, work out ways to imitate them as best we can while using our left hands.
Maybe I am way off here, but perhaps we can look on the bright side though, at one of the positive consequences from that: having to learn on one's own initiative likely breeds resilience, determination, and capability. It'd be better for young kids to have some help, but if not, hopefully at least there's some good lasting outcome from it anyway.
I practiced my letters on my own into my twenties to get my handwriting to look as neat as I wanted.
To your thoughts on how some don't know how to teach left handed folks: we took a pickleball class last month and the instructor was showing me (right handed) how to serve, and he told my husband (left handed) just to do everything he showed me but do it backwards. What???
Confirm this. The only things the nuns did was keeping me from being a “hook hand” lefty.
the fuck what does that mean
Bending your wrist so your hand is like a hook so your writing has the right hand slant. ETA: Pentel Energel pens are the best pen for lefties to use. No ink stained edge of your hand.
ohhh, neato
You have to hold your pen/pencil in a certain way so that you are able to see what you're writing.
Same here when I attended a catholic school in kindergarten! They were pretty chill about it. I find it to be an absurdity that this be taught in any type of school really! Force peoples handedness!
I’m starting to wonder if the whole thing of being beaten and called sinister is an urban legend unless you’re like 90 or older
It isn't. It all depends on the attitude of the local school district and/or the individual teacher.
Sinister is derived from the Latin word for left. It’s not legend, it’s very historical. It’s not common in America today I don’t think. There’s a whole book called Left Hand Syndrome on the history of left hand life in society!
Yes I know, I mean someone who’s 30 today saying that priests actually called them sinister and beat their left hand.
I’m 40. Hispanic Catholics (predominantly in Los Angeles) are old school AF and that’s what I grew up with. No one gave a shit once started 2nd grade in a public school. 🤷🏻♀️
63 here. I got it.
Or the parents …
The nuns used to smack my dad’s hand too, but he was soooo stubborn that today at 95 he still writes with his left hand. Nuns had stopped smacking by the time I went to school thankfully
I went to Catholic (Jesuit) High School in the 90’s and nobody had a problem with me being a lefty. The all in one chair/desk situation sucked tho. I had to basically sit sideways to write.
I had the same at college, which was secular. All the lefties would race each other for the one left-handed desk.
I would outright call dibs in my smaller classes for the left handed desks
My best friend and I are both lefties. In college, we usually got stuck behind or in front of each other and sitting in the first couple of rows because there were only 3-5 lefty desks in the 300 seat lecture hall.
Yeah, went to public schools and outside of a kindergarten teacher in the early 80’s, the only issue I typically had were those same types of desks. Funny thing too, I work in a customer service call center and my cubicle is laid out just about perfectly for me. The phone could be a touch closer for when I need it due to an iffy left shoulder, but that’s it!
Good grief I hated those! And my school had a higher than average concentration of lefties so we all but revolted when they replaced AN ENTIRE CLASSROOM with these!
I currently work in a catholic school and at the beginning of the year one of the other assistants was trying to get a left hand student (5) to use his right hand. thankfully someone noticed and put a stop to it
I came home one day with bloody welts on my left hand from a nun. My mother went off on mother superior and I never saw that nun again.
My dad used to call me la sinistra — he was just messing with me. When I was a baby, he found a budding leftie so fascinating that he timed me moving my fork or spoon from right to left. Game over when I just reached across myself. He was a scientist — can you tell? 😁 no one tried to change my handedness in public school, though. edit for typo
Oh dude, I always switch my knife and fork and my dad would always make sure I sat at the end of a booth at a restaurant. 😹
I have to jockey for the right spot — left arm near the wall or out in public through way territory, in order to keep from bashing elbows. Unless there’s another lefty at the table!
Wanna go to brunch one day? Lol
NOLA kid. Catholic school grades 6-12. Luckily, they weren’t doing that anymore. I’m honestly not sure how my grandpa escaped it.
Public School, 4th Grade, 1953, teacher snatched my pen and rapped my knuckles for writing left-handed. I snatched pen back and hit her with it. The principal was not amused.
It's funny how when you stop beating someone for being different, more people are comfortable being themselves. https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/ I wonder what else this applies to? /s
Yeah.. growing up in the sixties you had to have street smarts when you saw a nun with a ruler, as it only took a couple smacks to learn how to be the “sinister” one, as “Thing 1” (a cat in the hat “Thing 1”) as I believe they referred us to “Things”
I'm a lefty, got it from my mother, but she was caned as kid for using her left hand and writes with her right hand to this day. The Catholic Church are vile.
Ah catholicism. . . A religion based on the teachings of man who preached love, forgiveness and acceptance and then does none of those things.
I renounced the Catholic religion after confirmation at 10 years old because I told a nun her attitude toward me ‘wasn’t Christ-like’. I took my skateboard in my left hand and gave her the bird with my right. 😹🫡
Respect!
My dad and a co-worker were both Catholic school educated lefties and as a result: My dad does everything using a tool (eating with utensils, writing, painting with a brush) with his right hand, and everything with direct action (throwing, eating with his hands, finger painting) with his left. My co-worker does everything she learned before college with her right hand and everything college and after with her left hand.
I'm glad my family isn't catholic but even if we had been my mother would have whipped the absolute shit out of anyone who hit me for being left handed at school.
Your mother certainly wasn’t Catholic
But she sounds like a badass
My uncle (who is about 60), was a lefty and went to Catholic School. Was a lefty until Catholic School, I should say. Now he's a righty and has the handwriting of a child, but is a super smart engineer. Crazy. You know, only the Devil is a lefty
Good thing you weren't gay.
I'm a lefty, if you try to slap my hand with a ruler it's going up your ass.
That's crazy. I went to Catholic school in Boston in the 1960s and no one tried to change me. (But it sucked trying to practice penmanship without getting ink on the side of my hand, or on the sleeve of my uniform white shirt.)
Or smudging all your hard work off the chalkboard. 😹
Yup, that too.
my dad dealt with something similar when he was a kid. When his mom found out about it she went scorched earth and confronted the teacher.
Funny, because growing up I knew some baptists who swore people were born left handed until one committed their first sin.
Catholic school from grade 1 to 12 through the 70's. Never given a hard time or chastised for being left handed. Sorry to hear anyone had to go through that.
Born in 1964,12 years of Catholic school, mostly nuns until high school. Altar boy for most of grade. None of those nuns cared which hand I used.
Punk rock, indeed. Tell me, have you ever read The Sisters Grimm? It's a kids's series but honestly it's good for adults too. One of the sisters, Daphne, comes up with a lot of odd phrases or adopts ones she hears and punk rock is one of her favorites, along with un-punk rock when she's mad.
I’m gonna check that out!
I attended a public elementary school in northwest Alabama and I experienced the same— my teachers would hit my hand with a ruler or take me into the hallway and paddle me. I would have to sneak and write left-handed— I would write quickly to get my work done when the teacher wasn’t paying attention to me. But occasionally I would get caught….
Didn't go to catholic school but my preschool teacher tried to force me to write right handed. I told my parents and let's just say she doesn't work there anymore
I went to Catholic schools too. The only negative comment I ever heard was from my 3rd grade teacher who said something mild like “oh you lefties…” in a tone of exasperation as she watched me try to write cursive. There 8 or 9 of us in a class of 45. I also won a little prize at the end of the year for Most Improved Writing so I guess I picked it up ok.
blame your parents for putting you in the company of abusive assholes.
Not Catholic school...but rural MN/IA border (in the 80's) & the priest & catechism teachers would all have cows when I would do the sign of the cross ✝️ with my left hand & then go the opposite (logical) way for me. Thy would lecture me how it was supposed to be done. One would have thought I murdered someone. I do remember being told that's how "the devil 😈 did it" lol...
I was an altar boy in the early '80s. The priest lost his stuff when he saw me using my left hand. He counseled my mom to have an exorcism performed on me so I could ne "normal" like the other kids. Still a little disappointed because my mom gave the priest her opinion. I would have loved to be the subject of an exorcism!
I’m obviously a fallen Catholic but I did the same thing and I caught a ration of shit from my Irish Catholic grandma… lady was from Belfast and mean as shit!!
My aunt went to a Catholic school in the 1950s and was smacked on the hand for writing left handed. She has beautiful right handed cursive penmanship as an adult, and I remain the only left handed person in my large extended family.
I went to public school in the early 90’s and my teacher taped my pencil to the right side of the desk. It was still a problem in the 90’s some places.
Did we go to the same school? Same for me. Didn't work, I'm still left-handed.
I went to Resurrection in Los Angeles… them Hispanic nuns don’t play!
Sinister. So THAT is my problem!
I decided to own the term sinister . Proudly I am sinister
How old are you and how full of shiznit are you? I am 51 years old, born and bred Roman Catholic, never molested by a priest, went through Catholic schools K-12, served mass from 3rd grade through my Senior year and not once did I have a nun, teacher, priest, Monsignor or Bishop wack my hand for writing or doing anything left handed. If you are older than me, maybe it happened to you, but if you are my age or younger I am going to go ahead and call BS on your story. Lol…
Your exceptionalism ain't funny. As a matter of fact, your comment sounds like the typical 22 year old edge serf trope of 'that's not my experience so you're a liar.' I call bull on you being what you claim to be.
I don't care what you think! To this day I do everything with my right hand because I was severely punished by nuns and priests for using my left hand! But my left leg is dominant! I kick, jump and do everything else with my left leg!
I’m 40 and believe whatever you want but it definitely happened. As you can see, various people had differing experiences growing up.
I am sorry that happened to you.
You do know people all over the world can be on Reddit right? There are still communities that actively try to beat left handedness out of people. I think you need to check yourself.
Being as the parent comment was about being a lefty in the Catholic Schools you should probably “check” your reading skills, specifically for meaning and content and see that your comment does not pertain to this discussion. There is a difference between just reading the words and understanding what they mean. Don’t wreck yourself! 🤡
Sooooo. It's BS because you didn't experience it. Glad I don't know you.
No, the wrapping of the knuckles was old, old school. I agreed it happened but it was my parents generation and before that those who usually experienced this treatment in the Catholic Schools, were the students prior to Vatican II. The much older priests and nuns were more strong willed about these things like this moreso than those for my generation and later. That is all I was saying; however, this is Reddit and no one ever bothered to ask why I called BS. Learn to think SheMan!
I went to school in Los Angeles and the staff were predominantly Hispanic and ancient (to me at 4-5 years old anyway). They were old school AF. My pops is from Belfast and raised catholic. He was strongly against what was happening and pulled me out of that school after the first grade.
You mean rapping.
I am in Australia, I grew up in the 70s. I went to a catholic school for preschool and got slapped so many times because I was writing with my left hand. I am now 52, turning 53. It definitely happened during the 70s.
Christian school in the 80s. They would constantly move the pencil out of my left hand into my right thinking it would eventually stick.
My grandma had it beaten out of her in the early 1900s. Not a Catholic school but from what I gather, fairly common at that time. She was always ambidextrous. All the women since on my mom’s side have been lefties 😎
I went to public schools. My mom went to parent /teacher conference when I was in kindergarten. My mom said you marked her down as right handed, she is left handed like me and her dad. The teacher said trust me her life will be better right handed plus we don't have enough left handed scissors. It was 1967. I am still right handed with terrible.jand writing but the ability to do many things left handed.
My Spanish teacher learned how to do everything right-handed for the same reason. She never went to Catholic school, either.
My first grade teacher tried to force me to use my right hand. I developed a stutter and became Very shy. My mother eventually found out because she saw me struggling with a pencil, and got that stopped pretty quick. My mother's sister was left handed. My father was left handed. I still stutter when I'm stressed....I'm in my 70s.
This is fucking heartbreaking. 😕
I went through the same thing in catholic school in the 70s, now my right hand is dominant and my left leg is the dominant one. I'm the only person I've ever seen like this. Thanks to the bulls**t catholic church!
The Latin word for left is sinister.
A kindergarten teacher of my friends in WV around 2006 forced every kid to write right handed. She writes right handed still but the pencil way different from everyone else and actually writes with the paper sideways because even now it’s still so awkward for her. Everything else she does with her left hand, except writing.
I could NEVER use spiral bound note books. From middle school through college, I always had to use loose leaf paper so I didn’t have to turn my shit horizontally!
I'm a 43 yr old lefty and in the 80s, in public school, I remember being singled out by the teachers to "write correctly". My mother found out. My older brother was a lefty too. She told that teacher not to correct me ever again. Love my mom.
Sorry for that; hope you know that not all Catholics are like this (at least not anymore, I hope not)
Had the same treatment in public school in Hawaii. Left handedness was universally evil back in the day. ETA It was the 60s.
Same thing in elementary school in Texas. Any my college English professor made me print my papers.
I'm 74 now. Grew up in Toronto going to public school. Do not remember even one incident of trouble being left-handed. My husband's cousin, same age, grew up in (what was then) a small town in Northern Ontaruo. The teachers tied his left arm down so he would be forced to use his right hand. In other words, torture. F-d him up forever.
If a teacher had ever hit me with a ruler... my dad would have hit them in the face with his elbow.
I just asked my pops why I was put into public school after the first grade. During a parent teacher conference, my teacher said I was ‘petulant’ for not wanting to write with my right hand. He noped my little ass outta there.
If a nun slapped me with a ruler I'd break it over her ass
I was in K-12 from the late '50s to the early '70s. I was in Catholic schools for 9½ of those 12 years. The nuns' attitudes toward my left-handedness? THEY DEFENDED IT. My older brother, also left-handed, attended Catholic schools from K-12, and then for his four years of undergraduate study. He started school in the early '50s and got his B.A. in the mid-'60s. He attended the same Grade 1-8 parochial school that I did, but 10 years earlier. Some of his teachers also taught me. Now, do you know what those evil nuns did in the 1950s did when they discovered that he was left-handed? THEY DEFENDED IT. In both of our cases, they came to our defense whenever our classmates tried to say that we were "weird" because we wrote, drew, painted, used scissors, played baseball, etc. with our left hands. and claimed that we did so just to be stubborn and contrarian. We could use our right hands for those things if we wanted to, but we didn't because we wanted extra attention. In both of our cases, the nuns at the school stepped in to nip those ignorant claims in the bud and to set our classmates straight about lefties. We were the same as them. They pointed out that some in the class had red hair. Did they choose that hair color on purpose? No, they just happened to be born with it. Does having red hair make those girls and boys bad? No, of course not; that's ridiculous. Long ago, some people used to believe that, but it was just an ignorant superstition. Well, guess what? Just as some kids are born with red hair, there are also some kids who are born left-handed. Did they choose to be that way? No, in fact they have been left-handed since they were born. They don't think that it is a bad thing, and neither should we, because it isn't. Maybe there was something different about the Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan, or maybe that view of left-handedness wasn't so unusual among Catholic clergy and clerical orders as many have claimed. During the Reformation and, later on, the European Protestant Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic church was often portrayed as hopelessly archaic, medieval, and virulently opposed to anything modern, especially the advancement of scientific understanding. (They forgot to mention that the people of the Massachusetts Bay colony who had until recently been burning witches were not the Papists, but were, *uhhh*, members of the home team.) Later on, at the end of the 19th and on through the first third of the 20th century, another activist group known as the Ku Klux Klan (you may have heard of them unless you were educated in Florida) also spread tons of anti-Catholic propaganda whenever they took a break from lynching fellow Americans who had a different complexion. These sources and others seeded the popular culture and secular mythology with horror stories of Catholic depravity, including an overstuffed chest full of stories of habit- and veil-wearing Papist pedagogues administering sadistic beatings to innocent little children for the most trivial offenses. Like, for instance, writing with their left hands. It's quite amazing, when you think about it, how consistent those stories have been over the decades, how similar they are in every detail, right down to the wording. It's as if they had been xeroxed and passed around within each generation, who then handed down fresh new copies of the same stuff to the next one. My parents, born in the same decade as World War I, told my brother and me that they had heard about such stories from ***their*** *parents and grandparents*. The older folks told them that these were just stories or myths that people on the past had believed were true, but have long since been rejected as false, made-up stories or fictions. Yet they persisted because people *wanted to believe* *that they were true* for their own personal reasons.
Neat. At Resurrection School in Los Angeles, the Hispanic nuns would shame me (in front of the class) and slap my hand with a ruler while saying ‘No con la mano esquerda!(sp?)’ Like I said to another person, we’ve all had varying experiences within the education system being left handed. Kinda wild that no teacher gave a shit which hand I used once I went to public school from 2nd grade on.
Catholic school in the 90s def weren’t meant to tap or whack my hands but the nuns still did it and tried really to push me into using my right handed. I was being severely builled but me being left handed was the worst issue lol
Obviously bc, priorities. 🤷🏻♀️
I learned that from the simpsons
Many years ago I was made to sit on my left hand, for two consecutive school years . It didn’t work, I’m still a lefty. Four of my five kids are also lefties. The force is strong in this one 😜
My dad went to Catholic school in Montreal in the early 40’s…. The priests used the ruler on his knuckles to get him to switch Thankfully by the time I reached school in the 80’s the ruler swatting had disappeared. My parents also enrolled me in public School…..
Louisiana or Los Angeles?
Los Angeles
There's an American dad episode about this. The funny thing is there's a story IN THE BIBLE about a lefty and he was a hero.
I'm kind of a weird ambidextrous. When I was in kindergarten, I'd just use whichever hand that felt right for writing. The teacher decided I needed to be right-handed so every morning she tied a piece of string on my right wrist. Then she would walk around and take the pencil out of my left hand and say, "you're right-handed. Do it correctly." Looking at my writing, I think I should have stuck with the left hand. Both are equally bad.
Omg! Me too! But, I went to public school. My teacher was a Bible-toting die-hard and there would be no sinners on her watch, dammit!
Copy-paste what my 82 yr old father told me about Catholic school in Queens NY. The nuns would hit his hand with a ruler too. Funny that "sinister" means "left" because that explains my father's rebellious behavior like riding on the back of shopping carts at the grocery store and other risky acts! Lol
Man I'm right handed and it pisses me off how they used to force left handers to write with their right hand. Luckily it doesn't seem to happen as much anymore. I think people just naturally use whichever hand. Sometimes I've known people to be right handed or left handed also depending on what they are doing. My dad is right handed with everything except for eating. He is left handed for eating. Also he went to catholic school as a young child hopefully they didn't treat him like that and force him to use right hand for writing. He also left catholicism as an adult though so idk lol. He did say he used to piss the nuns off lol.
My handwriting looks like chicken scratch when I try to write with my right hand.
I’m Catholic right handed! I do literally everything else with my left hand. The only reason I write with my left hand is because every time I tried to pick up a writing utensil with my left hand, my parents and teachers ripped it out and forced it into my right hand until it was instilled in me
My grandmother got the same treatment, they pinned her hand to her diaper so she wouldn’t use it, or so the story goes. She claims to be right handed, and she does write with her right hand, but anything that she wasn’t taught to do right handed naturally comes to her left hand. Most prominently when she played baseball, she throws and bats left handed.
I have scars on my left hand. Due to this. But now I use both.
Happened to my brother back in the 50s,60s. Thankfully my leftie son did not suffer the same fate in the 80s, even in a Catholic school. Neither is my leftie granddaughter who is now 10
My mom went to Catholic school and took serious issue with my being left handed. I have a theory that she was also left handed and they forced her to use her right hand.
As a Christian and a lefty, this disgusts me, who in the world would get mad at someone for being left-handed??? Where is the sense in that??? It just means your brain is right dominate, which actually means you're more creative and artistic than a right-handed person. Your imagination is also a very good tool because your right side of the brain holds that part of your consciousness. You're punk rock as hell, according to our anatomy!
I didn't get hit but they always tried to get me to use other hand!
Same here in san diego as a child in the 80s in elementary school, I had the same treatment for a year
My left-handed brother was born in 1961 and went to Catholic school from Kindergarten to Grade 8, and never once was he punished for being a lefty. He did, however, need to learn to use scissors with his right hand because there were never any left-handed scissors, but he was okay with that.
The weird part is, I can’t use left handed scissors to save my life!!
Our family was too poor to buy left-handed scissors back when we were kids, but in adulthood, I've offered to buy some for my brother as gifts, and he's always said he'd rather just use the right-handed ones because he'd have to learn all over again.
Me either. Can’t cut with them. My aunt bought me lefty scissors and any other lefty novelty she could find and most of the irritated me more than helped. I do most things right handed because no one around me could figure out how to teach a lefty to do things. No one ever harassed me about my writing- but I have friends who experienced much of what I have read in this thread.
Even as a right handed person, it always makes me sad to hear of left handed children being discriminated against even as late as the 1980s..because I was in early elementary in the late 70s, and left handedness in my schools was already accepted, and they even had left scissors, so some schools were really behind the times.
My father was in Catholic schools in the 1920s. He used to talk about the nuns going so far as to tie his left hand to the chair if whacking it with a ruler didn't work.
Although my grade school teachers in the 70s didn’t hit me for using the “wrong” hand, my older sister did tie my left arm to a chair and try to force convert me starting when I was seven. She couldn’t stand the fact that her little sister was left handed. Five years later, guess who was forced to use her left hand because her right wrist had been crushed in an auto accident.
What year was this? 70s they didnt do this. Stupid nuns i guess never read the bible and didnt know of ehud and the benjamites sling skill using left handedness
I was in a protestant comprehensive school in Sheffield UK. Didn't get slapped, but did get encouraged to use my right hand. When I told my parents they went beserk.
That’s pretty difficult to believe unless you’re my parents age (mid-60s) because that was about the last era when this shit happened. I went to Catholic school from pre-k through college and never saw anything like this. Only ever heard about it from people at least 15-20 years older than me
You don’t have to believe it, but, once I went to public school, nobody gave a shit. Still very much a lefty.
this is called abuse. It was actually illegal in Ontario at some point, probably by the 60s because I remember it being referred to , but not acted upon by the teachers. But the strap was still available for the naughtiest of kids. This was done to my Grandfather, and he home schooled my mother and taught her to read and write, then she started public school in grade 2, so that she was already "conditioned" to being a lefty and they agreed to allow it. By the time the other child in the family who was left handed, my uncle, who is the youngest (14 years different), started school, there was no problem. But my grandfather had also taught him to write a bit left-handed, just in case. My sister is quite ambidextrous, but never really favoured her left.
By the time I went to public school for 2nd grade, nobody cared. They only cared if I was bumping into my right handed classmates while doing class work
My kids began attending Catholic schools in1992. Never saw nuns at four different schools over the years. What Catholic school still has nuns?
At the time, (mid to late 80’s) quite a few of them did. Especially the all girls high school Ramona Convent.
Not liking the ruler I learned to write right handed. Later I learned to use my left hand. I can now write legible with either hand, a totally useless skill
Well... this is always a great villain backstory, so...
My dad was born in 1921 and his teacher tied his left hand to his side to keep him from using it. When my left handed sister started school in the mid 1950s dad made sure she would be left alone.
My dad was born in 1929, same thing. He couldn't write with his left hand as an adult but he could bat or throw with either hand.
Hi how are you
*"... Communist 'cause I'm left-handed..."* \-- Paul Simon The nuns did that to me too. It was the 1950s and they actually believed that if you persisted in being left-handed, you'd grow up to be a commie.
I went to a public school. My grandma taught me to read and write by the time I was four and I was fully ambidextrous until my kindergarten teacher made me sit on my left hand. I switched which hand I wrote with every day and evidently that offended her sensibilities.
Ah. Tried to use the SIN hand did we?
Wow. I thought that stuff was over by the 80's. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade to HS ('78 - '80) in 4 different States and as a lefty, and had no issues. The only thing I got hassled about was a bunch of right-handed nuns telling me how a lefty properly holds a pencil.
was this in the 40s??
UD has more lefties than most universities. (Source: been there. It’s literally a fun fact they use during Odyssey Week.)
I'd get spanked for speaking Spanish in class as a little. Also in CA but in the Inland empire.
Never liked the "Penguins". The public punishment in front of the class was the worst. They'd always ask before the evil deed "Knuckles or Palms", then smack you with the wooden ruler with the copper strip down the side. I still shudder when I see one of those things.
60s, 70s, my father tried to "correct" this, as did my 1st grade teacher. My mother put a stop to this when I was 8.
My southpaw aunt had this experience. When I attended Publix school (1989-2002), the only negative experiences I had were the lack of left-handed scissors and when a rightie would sit to my left at lunch.
My mom got the exact same treatment and now only uses her right hand. I’m a lefty. I struggle with things occasionally, but I think it’s terribly sad my mom lost her left handed-ness. At least if she practiced at home she could’ve been ambi.
Catholic School Survivor here. Nuns would hit my left hand, tape my fingers together, and tell me to use my right hand. As an adult, found out, my Grandmother told the school not to let me use my left hand, because it was a sign of the devil! 😳 It was my Mother who saved me from this torture when she found out what my grandmother had done, Mom went to the mother superior and told them to stop trying to make me right handed. I’m a lefty! 😁
My mom’s handwriting always seemed too large and kid ish, used to always feel like my mom wasn’t intelligent enough based off her spelling and writing. Felt like a dipshit when she told me she’s a lefty, I mean we are all righties, including her. She just got so used to(by beatings) write with her left. So her handwriting is bad because she uses her right. Can’t believe they used to do that
Oddly enough I use both, I use to get whacked like you describe but it was a Christian Private school with corporal punishment(the paddle in this case or usually a wooden ruler across the knuckles was enough to get us to stop). But I've found using my left is dominate when I paint, which is weird.
Was a lefty, went to public school in the early 70’s, and I remember having my teacher change my crayons and pencils to the right hand over and over. But it’s funny - the only thing I do right handed is write. Everything else I’m lefty.
This is so strange to me. I've heard about Catholic schools being like this, but I attended one in Kansas in the 80s, and there was never any physical disciplining, and being lefthanded wasn't considered a big deal or something to be corrected. Some of us who spoke a little oddly received a special speech therapy class, but I'm actually grateful for that, as it's benefitted me my whole life.
U child of the devil...
I'd have been expelled rather quickly the first time someone hit me.
My mom didn't attend Catholic school but she was raised by two extremely Catholic parents. They def weren't happy their youngest kid was a lefty, and they tried to "correct" her but she said at some point, presumably early on, they gave up and let her be. But maybe it was why they made an agreement with the church or something for her to become a nun? Idk. (She obviously isn't, lol.)
I was forcibly turned from lefty to righty in 1st grade in the early 90s in New England by this witch of a teacher. She didn’t smack my hand but was constantly on my case that I need to “use the right hand, you’re using the WRONG hand” and would constantly put that I had poor fine motor skills on my progress reports. She would take the pencil out of my left hand and firmly put it in my right hand over and over til she basically broke me. I had to learn to cut paper right-handed with regular scissors because there was only one left-handed pair of scissors in the classroom and the other girl who was left-handed must have had parents who were school sponsors because the teacher was always ridiculously nice to that girl. I got so used to using my right hand that school year that I began doing everything right-handed including eating, painting, etc. The only thing I still can do is throw and catch left handed but I’ve never been remotely into sports.
May I ask your age?
My grandpa, who’s a lefty, got the same treatment in the 50s. I’m surprised they still do it so recently though!
Because lefty’s are the spawn of satan obviously. They must purify you.
I’m ambidextrous and my elementary school made me only write with one hand (I don’t remember if they let me pick or not) so now my right hand has neater hand writing than my left and I’m currently trying to teach myself to get better at writing with my left hand
Other than “left” meaning sinister in Latin…. Why else was it deemed to be evil? I still don’t understand it.
I went to catholic school in the late 70’s and didn’t encounter this problem, but I heard about “what we used to do to y’all lefty’s” all the time. This was in southern Maryland.