Left Out -- Left-Handers Are Handicapped In This Right-Handed World, But Why? Arm Yourself With These Facts

LIFE'S VIGNETTES:

A distraught mother weeps over her young son's first efforts to use a color crayon. What's wrong? ``I think, I think Johnny's going to be left-handed.''

A hostess seats the family for Thanksgiving dinner. ``You can all sit anywhere you want, except for you, Allison. You sit at the end of the table, because you're left-handed.''

``No, Harold, you cannot play the violin in an orchestra left-handed. You'd poke somebody in the eye with the bow; besides, it just isn't done.''

``We've got this new pitcher coming up. Real flamethrower for an arm. Kind of a flake,

though. Typical left-hander.''

------------------------------------------------------------

Left-handers comprise one of the largest, and least vocal, minorities in the world - an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population in the United States.

Without a whimper, they endure slights that others would consider grounds for carrying signs or writing to their representative in Congress.

Wonderful folks, left-handers!

Long ignored, they increasingly are being scrutinized by academics - to determine how they got that way (the evidence isn't all in), and how they stack up against right-handers in a variety of tests (rather well, thank you).

So, who's left-handed? President Reagan is supposed to have said that he was born left-handed, but he thought somebody changed him. He couldn't remember where or when.

You can't join the club that easily, Mr. President. A true left-hander would have remembered.

Many academics say handedness is just one sign of a person's ``sidedness,'' which involves everything from which eye dominates to what palm patterns are evident. But, for purposes of this treatise, one with a serious claim to left-handedness either writes left-handed or eats left-handed or, preferably, does both left-handed.

Some facts, figures and theories on left-handedness, gleaned from doctoral dissertations, masters theses, newspaper articles, books and interviews:

-- Left-handers who suffer strokes do better at learning to talk again, because they are more likely to use both sides of the brain to process information.

-- Dr. Bryng Bryngelson, a University of Minnesota speech pathologist and a pioneer in the study of left-handedness, flatly stated that left-handers tend to be more creative and imaginative. But others credit any creativity and imagination shown by left-handers to their efforts to survive in a right-handed world.

-- Because most left-handers tend to process information mainly in a non-linguistic, holistic and synthetic manner with the right side of the brain, many aspiring right-handed artists have been told they will get their best results by emulating left-handers and ``thinking with the right side of the brain.''

Theories abound as to why people become left-handed.

Paul Bakan, professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., has concluded that ``birth stress'' - breech, premature, prolonged labor, breathing difficulties, Cesarean section - tends to push infants toward left-handedness.

Bakan says several sets of statistics support his belief that left-handedness may be determined at birth. One showed that 87 percent of left-handers have two right-handed parents. Another showed that twice as many left-handers (44 percent vs. 22 percent for right-handers) had difficulty at birth. Still another showed that the left brain is more sensitive than the right brain to lack of oxygen, thus shifting dominance to the right brain (which left-handers prefer).

``I'm still solidly behind this theory,'' says Bakan. ``There's one other statistic that makes it probable. Males are more likely than females to undergo birth stress, and male left-handers outnumber females by about 1 1/2 to 1.''

On the other hand, scientists at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, recently reported that lefties begin to show themselves in the womb - and even there, they are in a distinct minority.

Using ultrasound on 224 fetuses, they

LEFTX 0

LEFTX 1

found that only 12 sucked their left thumbs. The 212 others favored their right thumbs.

Even in these enlightened times, left-handers feel the lash of discrimination.

Robert Green, a Seattle Postal Service employee, was under fire in the early '80s because he sorted mail with his left hand. Although he'd done it that way for 13 years, the manual said it had to be done right-handed. It took intervention by Sen. Henry Jackson to change the rules.

Windy Winborn, a left-handed officer for a suburban Kansas City police force, was fired for ``insubordination'' in 1980 because he refused to wear a gun holster on his right hip. Windburn argued he was afraid he'd shoot himself in the foot if he tried to remove his weapon with his right hand.

A few years ago, a national grocery chain ousted a checker because she insisted on ringing up sales with her left hand. It looked awkward, the chain said.

But left-handers have fought back. A decade ago, a 20-year-old Spokane man sued Spokane School District 81, charging that a substitute first-grade teacher 18 years earlier had forced him to write with his right hand. The change, he said, had ruined his life.

Are left-handers accident and death prone?

``There's bad news for lefties in my new book,'' says Prof. Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia psychology departmentand editor of ``Left-handedness: Behavioral Implications and Anomalies.''

Left-handers are much more accident prone than right-handers, says Coren, who, with Diane Halpern of San Bernardino State University, studied 1,900 college students and found ``an astounding 89 percent of the left-handers had an accident in the previous two years that had required medical treatment.''

Coren says left-handers have 20 percent more sports-related injuries, 25 percent more work-related accidents. They have a 49 percent higher risk of accidents in the home, a 54 percent greater risk while using tools and an 85 percent higher risk while driving a car.

Worse, says Coren, an intensive study of death records of professional baseball players revealed that left-handers tended to die earlier than right-handers. The mean age for left-handers at death was 63.9 years; for right-handers, it was eight months longer.

Coren and Halpern say very few left-handers survive beyond age 80.

``After I published the study,'' says Coren, ``my son, who is left-handed, came to visit me. He put his arm around me and said he thought we should spend more time together, because he didn't know how much longer he had to live.''

But some of Coren's findings have been challenged by Max G. Anderson, a left-handed numbers cruncher with the Canadian Statistical Analysis Service in Vancouver, B.C.

Anderson said he found that left-handed professional baseball players actually lived two years longer than right-handers.

Nonsense, says Coren. Anderson's figures are suspect because they include ambidextrous players, who are less likely than pure left-handers to die early.

The battle rages.

``Statistics show that a high percentage of left-handers do well in tennis and prizefighting,'' says Coren. ``And those with congruent elements (dominant hand and eye on the same side) do better in target shooting and bowling.

``We've also found that those who are cross-dominant are better baseball players and figure skaters. They seem to have better balance, for one thing.''

Janice Edwards, from Seattle, recently did her doctoral dissertation in psychology at the University of Washington on how left-handers and right-handers perform on a standard psychological test in which they are shown drawings of hands (left and right) and asked to tell what the hands were doing.

There were not too many differences, she says, but left-handers did tend to be more flexible than right-handers when they viewed cards showing their non-dominant hand.

``One thing I found when I talked with left-handers is that a lot of them have a lot of pent-up emotion about being left-handed,'' says Edwards.

``A professor told me he grew up in the Depression, when there was a shortage of baseball mitts, and he had to share a mitt and they were always right-handed.''

Another fellow researcher, she says, was led to believe as a child that there was something seriously wrong with him because he was left-handed.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported in 1985 that children who possess extremely high levels of mathematical or verbal ability tend, far more often than children of normal ability, to be left-handed, nearsighted and suffering from asthma or other allergies.

Alas, there's a flip side.

Walk into almost any remedial-reading class and you will see a disproportionate number of left-handers. Dyslexia affects far more lefties than right-handers.

In addition:

-- 20 to 50 percent of people with speech defects are left-handed.

-- About 25 percent of all deaf people are left-handed.

-- Roughly 40 percent of the mentally retarded are left-handed.

Experts draw sharply different conclusions from studies of left-handers who employ the so-called ``curled wrist'' method of handwriting (66 percent of males, 31 percent of females).

Dr. Robert Gregory, a left-hander who grew up in Bellevue and now heads the University of Idaho psychology department, believes the curled wrist signals less-effective use of the brain - the result of either mild brain impairment or a less efficiently organized brain.

Those who write with the curled wrist seldom do well in architecture or mechanical engineering, says Gregory, although they frequently are superior in responding to musical and visual stimuli.

In comparing right-handed writers, left-handers who do not write with the curved wrist and left-handers who employ the curled wrist, Gregory found that the first two groups had distinct job assignments for the two hemispheres of the brain, while the latter responded to stimuli with both sides of the brain at the same time, resulting in confusion.

But Gregory concludes on a happy note:

``I think the differences in most of these studies are very minimal. About half our psychology department is left-handed.''

Ask an older left-hander why he or she writes with a curved wrist and you are likely to get a simple explanation.

Many grew up at a time when elementary-school teachers insisted that all students place their papers on the desk in the same (right-handed) direction. To cope, they curled their wrists so they could see what they had written and, at the same time, avoid smearing the ink with their hand.

-- In the United States, a higher percentage of left-handers drink and smoke.

Harvard Medical School scientists also found that left-handers are far more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal disorders, migraine headaches, thyroid problems and diabetes.

-- James deKay, author of ``The Left-Handed Book'' (1966), concluded that left-handers and right-handers were destined for different roles in society.

``. . . Left-handers should not be expected to read or spell well, study philosophy and mathematics or become computer programers and lawyers,'' deKay wrote.

``Instead, they should get jobs as jazz musicians, abstract impressionists and baseball players.''

-- In 1915, only 3 percent of Americans admitted to being left-handed. By 1940, the figure had risen to 7 or 8 percent. Today it is more than 10 percent.

-- Asked about left-handers, the late Charles Dillon ``Casey'' Stengel once replied:

``Left-handers have much more enthusiasm for life. They sleep on the wrong side of the bed and their heads become stagnant on that side.''

Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in their preference for the right hand.

Even gorillas and chimpanzees, which are most closely related to humans in anatomy, show no hand preference.

But a survey of Cro-Magnon hand tracings found an overwhelming preference for the right hand. The same right-hand preference was found in studies of prehistoric tools.

-- Although there isn't such a thing as a left-handed monkey wrench, stores to serve the needs of left-handers have popped up around the country. They sell a variety of household implements, tools, stringed instruments and clothing.

-- Lefthanders International, Topeka, Kan., which publishes Lefthander Magazine (organized from the back to the front), claims 30,000 members.

Rose Dechand, a left-handed employee, says the organization hires both left-handers and right-handers ``because we're Equal Opportunity and aren't allowed to discriminate.''

But, she adds, right-handers who work there quickly realize how difficult it must be for left-handers in a right-handed world. Everything in the office is arranged for the left-hander, right down to pencil sharpeners with the handle on the left side.

For information on the organization, write: Lefthanders International, P.O. Box 8249, Topeka, Kan., 66608.

-- What are the chances of having a left-handed child?

If both parents are left-handed, odds are 1 in 2 that one of their children will be left-handed. If only one parent is left-handed, the odds are 1 in 6. If neither is left-handed, the odds are 1 in 16.

In 20 percent of identical twins, one will be right-handed, the other left-handed.

Left-handedness, by the way, occurs more often among twins than among single births.

-- The typewriter is one of the few instruments that favor the left-hander. Sixty percent of keystrokes are performed with the left hand, mainly because the most frequently used vowel, the e, is struck by the left hand. The letter ``a'' also is on the left-hand side of the typewriter.

Countless left-handers tell of developing neck and shoulder pains from from writing at one-armed right-handed desks in school.

In fact, 13 years ago, a left-handed student filed a formal complaint with the administration at Bellingham's Western Washington University saying he had been denied an equal educational opportunity because there were no left-handed desks.

Purchasing agents in Seattle schools and local colleges do their best these days to rectify old wrongs.

They buy about 10 percent left-handed desks when they place new orders.

In Seattle Public Schools, they also buy left-handed scissors and left-handed pouring ladles for home-economics classes.

Bud Turner, district physical education coordinator, orders two or three left-handed softball mitts for every 15 purchased, ``and the same with golf clubs.''

David Hall, an overseer of space needs for the University of Washington's capital budget office, says that left-handed desks traditionally have been ``segregated'' - in the front row, back row or at the ends of rows. No longer. When new classroom seating is designed, left-handed desks are scattered randomly throughout the class.

Back in 1979, when Seattle University undertook the remodeling of its nursing building, a committee sat down to discuss the needs of the handicapped. After the usual provisions for ramps, wide doors and special lavatory equipment, someone asked, ``But what about left-handers?''

Result: Seattle U bought 15 left-handed desks and 135 right-handed ones. The school's public-information director later said it was the first time in his memory that left-handedness had been recognized as a handicap.

Left on!

------------------------------------------------------------

Left-handed celebs

Some famous left-handers:

U.S. presidents: George Bush, Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, James Garfield.

World leaders: Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Queen Victoria.

Artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Pablo Picasso, Bill Mauldin.

Authors: Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain.

Entertainers: Peter Fonda, Charlie Chaplin, Danny Kaye, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Rudy Vallee, Harpo Marx.

Musicians and composers: Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Paul Williams, Ravel.

Others: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Edward R. Murrow.

Sports: Bruce Jenner, Dorothy Hamill, Gayle Sayers, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles, Sandy Koufax, Babe Ruth, Ken Griffey Jr., Johnny Vander Meer (only big-league pitcher to throw back-to-back no-hitters); Ken Stabler, Earl Anthony, Bill Russell, Lenny Wilkens.

Notorious: Jack the Ripper, Albert de Salvo (Boston Strangler).

------------------------------------------------------------

A long history of right-handed bias

Left-handedness has been frowned upon by society for centuries. Wedding rings were worn on the left-hand to ward off evil sprits.

The left hand was and is used for certain bodily functions in some cultures and deemed unclean.

Left-handed warriors died more often in battle because they did not hold the shield over the heart as right-handers did.

Many nationalities have uncomplimentary words for left:

Latin - sinister (covert).

German - linkisch (unhandy).

French - gauche (clumsy).

Spanish - zurdas (wrong way).

Italian - mancino (dishonest).

Old English - lyft (worthless).

The Bible reportedly has 29 mentions of handedness and none is complimentary to left-handers.

God's favorites always are seated at his right hand.

Not to overlook: ``left-handed'' compliments (a putdown), ``out in left field'' (not in life's normal ballpark) and ``wrong-hander'' (for the left-handed athlete).

------------------------------------------------------------

Take the measure of your strong side

The left side of the brain traditionally handles verbal and analytical functions, the right side the spatial and intuitive (Gestalt) functions, such as face and melody recognition.

All persons have a dominant eye and hand. An estimated 35 to 40 percent of the population are of mixed dominance (right hand, left eye, or vice versa).

Here's a test: To find out which of your eyes is dominant, sight your thumb on a distant object with both eyes. Close one eye, open it, then close the other.

Your thumb will remain fixed on the distant object when you sight with your dominant eye; it will ``jump'' with the non-dominant eye.