Southpaw: A person who is left-handed primarily uses his or her left hand, more so than the right hand; a left-hander will probably use the left hand for tasks such as personal care, cooking, and so on.
According to the official “Left-Hander’s Calendar”….
Because a southpaw’s brain tends to be more resilient than a right-hander’s, left handers frequently adjust more easily and quickly to difficulties they encounter.
I know the “Left Hander’s Calendar” is totally biased. They want to keep people tearing those days off! But the real research seems to coincide somewhat with this optimistic generalization stated above…
Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a “visual simultaneous” method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were a thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person — using the linear sequential processing style — would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This makes them appear (to the right-handed majority) as if they do not finish anything. Alternately, left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task. Perhaps the anecdotal evidence that suggests they are more creative stems from this ability to multi-task.
All of this comes down to thinking about what these past 30 days have done for the mind, body, and spirit of this southpawed bear. All in all, things feel pretty weird. Not bad weird. It’s just hard because I’m always thinking of other people, and rather than quench this thirst or curiousity for what I always knew in seconds, minutes, hours, maybe 1 day…I’m just left sitting, and thinking…and dancing.
Work has been off to a pretty fantastic start for 2/3’s of the week. The other 1/3 of the work week has been a little iffy. Starting off a couple mornings with a room full of 2 year old munchkin babies whom, for the most part, scream and cry for their mothers, is…well, less than ideal. Scientists call this age, “preoperational”, meaning that at 2 years old, a child can start to recognize mental thought as something other than motor skills. Basically, they can use their imaginations. However, my definition of “preoperational” really means….”before operating”. Meaning, they can’t operate, and are very very egocentric. You can’t blame them, the poor little munchkins. But really, in some ways you can. Give me a room full of whiny teenagers, I’ll whip em in to shape. But a room of crying 2 year olds? Yea, I’ll whip them in to shape too! (but i won’t like it.)
But really, the bulk of my multi-taking left-handed brain is not focusing on these primordial humans. Trying hard to focus on the positive things, my Chuvah and a plan…a plan for success without losing my gord.