I'm a south paw, and proud of it, too! But I never really think anything about it until someone else takes notice of it. That's exactly what happened to me recently when I was sitting in the takeout section of a local restaurant waiting on my order. I was writing something down and the lady who waited on me noticed that I was left-handed and commented on it.
She told me an interesting story about how her husband was almost violently conformed into using his right hand when he was a young boy in school. Apparently, his teachers (who obviously subscribed to some unwarranted fear about the meaning of being left-handed) would smack him on his left hand whenever he tried to use it to write in order to make him use his right hand.
Now, I've heard some strange stories when it comes to people and their pet peeves about left-handedness, but this one was especially disturbing. Why would someone go to such lengths to rob someone of their distinction? After doing a little research, I found out that historically, being left-handed was often associated with being "evil" or "clumsy." So, in order to deter any negative tendencies, people who believed this ideology thought that they were doing the right thing by trying to make the left-hander conform "for their own good."
Granted, south paws are in the minority when it comes to hand preference, but it has often been proven that this distinction has served them (and others) very well. Many of the greatest people who ever lived were left-handed (i.e. Benjamin Franklin, Babe Ruth, even Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama).
Consider the story of Ehud, a left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin whose story is documented in chapter 3 of the Book of Judges. It was typical in those days for a man to strap his sword or knife on his left side for use with his right hand. So it was easy to beware if the man in question was going to attack because he would be expected to reach toward his left side. However, God saw fit to use this man, Ehud, to get close enough to his enemy to destroy him because he would never be suspected as a threat - his knife was strapped to his right side. How clever!
So the next time someone feels so threatened by whatever God has chosen to make you distinctive that they try to make you conform to "the right way," don't be intimidated. Don't allow their fears to become your problem. It's your distinctiveness that God intends to use. Don't you dare lose it!
