7 Reasons Being Left-Handed Is Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
The two of you who read Friday’s post will know that Saturday was Left-Handers’ Day. To join in with the fun I decided that I would be an honorary left-hander for the day. How hard could it be? The problem was, by the time I had remembered I was supposed to be being left-handed for the day, I had already been right-handed for six hours. It didn’t really seem right to do a half-hearted job so I vowed to be a left-hander on Sunday instead. Only, I forgot. Again. So I wrote myself a note. On Monday I would be a left-hander. And I was. This is my story.
1. Tea. A disaster. From start to finish. Usually I am programmed to pour with my left hand and stir with my right. Having rewired myself – while the pouring was just as effective – the stirring was abysmal. I just couldn’t get into a rhythm. Tea was sloshing over the side. Across the work-surface. Onto the floor. And then there was the flicking off the tea-bag into the bin using the spoon. I missed the bin. I suspect you’re thinking it couldn’t get any worse? Sadly, it did. By the time I had finished we seldom had half a cup of tea between us. Shocker.
2. Writing Freehand Stylee. I made a few phone calls yesterday. That’s nothing new. I often like to leave answerphone messages for myself so I feel loved. Yesterday though I actually called some people who weren’t, never have and never will be me. I didn’t tell them though, it would have been bad for their morale. I used my left-hand to key in the number and hold the phone to my ear. This wasn’t a problem. During the course of the first call though it became abundantly obvious that I needed to make some notes. It’s at the point that I should have probably given up, used my right-hand and pretended this entire episode never occurred. But, dear reader, that would not be fair on you. If there is one thing we are on 7 Reasons, it is honest. So for your benefit I carried on in my pursuit of left-handed glory. I held the phone between my left-shoulder and left-ear and wrote with my left-hand. The result of all this is that I have a meeting on Thursday morning. Not that you would know unless you were hacking my phone at the time.
3. Application Of Cosmetics. On Sunday I got burnt by the vicious Kent 20 degrees sunshine. So come yesterday I was giving Sitting Bull a run for his money. As a result I needed to up the moisture levels of the affected areas using the various lotions and potions I could find lying around the house. Sadly for you I didn’t go for the tomato salsa. Instead I used Vaseline’s Essential Moisture Daily Body Lotion. It’s a tremendous product and I heartily recommend it. Applying it to my face with my left-hand was a doddle. I only wish I had recorded it for a ‘How To’ video on YouTube. Then came the difficult part. Tradition would have it that I apply moisture to my left arm using my right hand. I am sure you can work out what I had to do. The result was not only highly ineffective it also made me look as if I was doing The Funky Gibbon. Only it wasn’t funky and I didn’t have the Steve Wright intro or the future prospect of shrinking like Bill Oddie. Is it really possible to shrink about twenty inches while working with Kate Humble?
4. Mice. Having made half a cup of tea, written something even MI5 would struggle to decipher and performed an impromptu display of Swan Lake on acid, you would have thought not much more could go wrong. That’s when I tuned the computer on and realised I would have to bring the mouse to the other side of the keyboard. After an hour I was fairly proficient in keeping the cursor on the screen. Remembering which finger to click with though is something I never got used to. I was in and out of the recycle bin more times than a school-child watching Blue Peter. I also ended up watching Vanilla’s 1997 smash-hit No Way No Way. I’m still not entirely sure how.*
5. Lunch. Not difficult as such, just dangerous. Knives and Jonathan Lee don’t mix at the best of times. Throw in the fact that I was cutting left-handed while performing The Funky Gibbon in a sunburnt state to the rhythmic beats of Vanilla’s No Way No Way and it’s the kind of thing only a sick pervert would want to witness. As it happened he only stayed for the first half.
6. Photography. The more observant of you will note that every post on 7 Reasons is accompanied by a photo. Most of the time we just borrow one from Google Images, but on the odd occasion we carefully craft our own. Today’s photo – as I would hope you have guessed – is a first edition Lee. It seemed silly to write about my triumphs as a left-hander and then use someone else’s work to highlight it. Which is why I took the photo above. Never would I have thought using a camera would be an issue for a left-hander. But of course it is. I don’t know, maybe lefties actually use their right index finger and right thumb to press the various buttons and change settings? I guess it would make sense. Unfortunately for me though, 7 Reasons rarely makes sense. As such I used solely my left-hand to take the photo above. Twenty-three attempts it took me to finally take one that was both in focus and actually featured anything other than the floor.
7. Writing Keyboard Stylee. Having found six of my seven reasons in such quick time, I began to write this post yesterday afternoon. That brought with it its own problems. When you look at this post and compare it with Marc’s essays, you would wager that this post took far fewer hours to write. Oh how wrong could you be? Very actually. The whole point of being left-handed for the day was to use my left hand when on all other days of the year I use my right. As such my right hand went to the left-half of the keyboard and my left to the right. Three hours later this is the result.
*Honestly, I’m not. You have to believe me.
