In Israel, and in Arabic countries, is it common for people to hook their hand when writing?

[conuly]

Or do they turn the paper sideways?

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

I know. I've been bitter about that for a long time, and it's part of why I started making myself write with my left hand. The problem with that is that I've put in years of practice with my right hand. When I first started with my right hand, I was terrible with it. But I had to write the letters of the alphabet and do other tedious penmanship practice every school day for at least four years. That degree of practice makes a huge difference, and I have trouble motivating myself to do something so tedious again with my left hand.

So, I write more slowly and slightly messier and with a lot more effort with my left hand. But I can write with my left hand. And it's not much messier if I write slowly and carefully, and I've practiced a lot less. I'm good enough lefty (or was when I was making myself practice more) that when I accidentally sat at a lefty desk in college one day, I decided to just take notes left-handed that day, and that worked fine.

I don't think I have a strong handedness. And I basically do consider myself ambisinistrous as more than just a joke. I probably have dysgraphia/handwriting dystonia. One of my brothers was diagnosed with that as a kid because he was having issues at school. They never tested me. But years later when I asked for details, I found out I have all the same symptoms. Not only that, our penmanship is incredibly similar. He also considers himself left-handed, but he writes with his right hand. In his case, I think the writing right-handed is by choice, but he does so much else as a lefty that he considers it his dominant hand.

I don't do a lot of things that I think of as handed. I had trouble with lefty scissors as a kid, and I could usually make righty ones work. But I hated scissors as a kid and had issues with all of them, which I later realized is because they give kids crappy scissors too dull to cut paper. I can only shoot pool as a lefty, but shooting pool requires both hands, and I feel like my right hand is doing the harder part, personally. I usually just say I don't know my handedness.

But I'd have liked the chance to have let it develop more naturally, rather than basically being assigned to being a righty. I might be more dexterous if I had tried to develop as a lefty. I was told I was a righty, so I acted like one. It reinforced itself a lot. And I'm a total klutz, and I wonder if maybe I'd only be a partial klutz as a lefty. Of course, now with the vision problems it's pretty much a loss cause. Being a natural klutz and then losing depth perception... well, it's a lifetime of klutziness for me.