New lighting shed on left-hand dominance

     Left-handed people make up a total of ten percent of the world’s population, so it’s no surprise we’re forgotten about when new inventions are created. I will, for a short while, place you in the body of a lefty to demonstrate these inconveniences.  

     Let’s begin in the morning, shall we? It’s a blindingly bright spring morning and you awake for the school day shortly after the sun rises. From your wardrobe, you snag a pair of jeans and pull them on, satisfied with the outfit you’ve chosen. However, when you go to zip up the pants, you sigh in agony because you cannot reach the catch. 

     This is a new inconvenience for you. The flap of fabric that covers the fastening has inadvertently placed itself in the most inconvenient place. The area where you would typically be able to grasp the zipper is blocked by a seam and thick material, which is nearly impossible for you to maneuver around.  

     Once you arrive at school, you head to the computer lab to quickly type up a research paper that you forgot was due the same day. When you reach the data-heavy portion of your report, your fingers move to the right of the keyboard where the numbers are located. You find yourself performing a yoga move as you stretch the entirety of your arm across your body to reach these keys.  

     Not only are you performing kinetic aerobics to obtain the ability to type numerical digits, but you must also become ambidextrous to use the connected mouse. It’s either that or be forced to face the wrath of the librarian who becomes unnerved whenever someone switches the location of the mouse to the side that coordinates with their hand dominance.  

     When the bell rings and you find yourself in your first-period class, you remember that the class requires a lot of notetaking. You pull out your royal blue binder and open it to the section of the class you are in. After you flip to the worksheet that the rest of the class has started, you go to begin writing, but stop suddenly.  

     Blocking you from jotting down any sort of cohesive thought is a cumbersome metal ring. For the second time that day, you find yourself having to contort your body into unhuman-like positions. This time, however, it is to enable your hand to reach the leftmost side of the paper.  

     The same situation applies to the spiral journal that encompasses your notes. Except for this time, you have two options. The first is the same resolution provided for the binder, which is to transform yourself into a contortionist. The second choice is to rest your hand on top of the always-frozen, greatly uncomfortable spiral.  

     You have an assembly next class that your entire grade is to attend. You proceed to the auditorium and they tell you you’re going to be taking notes while a guest speaker delivers a presentation. 

     You groan in agony because you brought the same blasted spiral notebook to this meeting, and, on top of this, you must take these annotations from the lap desks provided on the side of the chairs. Once more, you must relocate your gluteus maximus to the upper left corner of the chair and turn your journal completely horizontal.  

     So, the next time a lefty asks you to pardon the amount of space their notebook takes up, politely allow them to use as much space as they need because living in a world built for right-handed people can be difficult enough.