Day 144: Hand Check

A while back, my uncle offered up a New Thing: switch my dominant hand for a day. So, in an attempt to put for LOTS of effort towards this blog (love me again?? :) ), I switched my dominant hand from my right to my left for a day.

Eating breakfast with a spoon was pretty easy. I just had a bit longer slurp of milk at the end of my bowl due to the lack of fine motor skills on the left.

Drying my hair, completely different story. I fought all conceivable nature to switch my hands such that I would hold my blow dryer in my right hand and brush with my left. Oh em gee.

It's like riding a unicycle during a bike race.

It's like a straight-laced businessman pulling a cell phone out of a gold rhinestone clutch.

It's like spitting on your mom.

It's inefficient, strange to look at and almost offensive to your natural instincts. I'd never do it again.

The rest of the day was, however, surprisingly simple. I took a yoga class, which was largely balanced in the "dominant hand" department. I drove my car, where I'm a 10 and 2er to a fault, I went shopping for new running shoes and I've done a ton of typing. At least with a touchpad on my computer, I didn't have to switch mouse hands, which would have been quite difficult. If I had to write anything by hand, or sign any signatures it would have been harder too. Perhaps this digital society promotes ambidextrousness?

Contemplating my left hand
This whole day was more confusing than revelatory in the hand-switching department. It's pretty easy to know that when I eat, I should switch hands, and when I dried my hair, that I should used my left. What I struggled with was when to use my left hand because I was switching my dominant hand, or if I should use the inconvenient hand. For example, most light switches in my apartment are on the right, so I use my right hand. Should I switch to my left because it's my less-dominant hand or should I use my right hand because it's the convenient hand?

I may have accidentally flubbed this up. I can't tell. But I'm really trying to win your love back by trying hard. :D

2 comments:

  1. I've never really paid attention to when I use my right hand vs my left, but I would venture to say that us lefties use our right hand more often than right handed people use their left simply by virtue of the fact that the world is set up with right handed people in mind (like your lightswitches).

    Now I'm going to have to pay more attention the rest of the day to see how that works out...

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  2. Yes, please do! I use my left hand quite a bit, and it's relatively strong in all areas except the blow drying. I just struggled when putting on a seat belt...reaching with my left felt just as natural as reaching with my right.

    What to do, what to do?

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