I am, by nature, right handed, or right hand dominant would be the better term, I guess, since I’ve almost always used both hands. At some point in my childhood, it occured to me that it was a bit odd for people to have one hand that did everything and one that just sort of hung around like an awkward kid waiting to get picked for a team.“Let’s see, we need another hand to balance out the body. We’ve already got one that writes, draws, throws, holds the silverware, swings a hammer, and so on. (Sigh) Come on over here kid. Welcome to the team, just stay over there out of the way and we’ll call you if we need a nail held or something”.
That’s not to imply that I ever used both hands equally; just that I made a conscious effort to employ my non-dominant one. For example, I never took the time to learn to write legibly with my left hand, (some would say I never did with my right one either), but I regularly ate, drank, opened doors, etc with it so as to keep it useful.
This came in handy (pun 100% intended) in the SFAUC instructor job I talked about last week. All the instructors had to know how to competently use their non-dominant hand because we regularly made students perform tasks with theirs. Should your dominant hand/arm be out of action, the time to figure out how to shoot, reload, put on a tourniquet, etc with your other one is not the moment when your life depends on it.
Since there were almost always a few left handed students in every class, all military weapons are made for right handers, and we were usually short on left handed instructors, I put some extra effort into learning to shoot (somewhat naturally and competently), left handed so that I could demonstrate for the lefties as well as the righties. I must have faked it pretty well, because a visiting instructor from another group pulled me aside one day and remarked, “You can shoot with either hand? I didn’t know you were amphibious.”.
Really, in the grand scheme of things, that wasn’t so bad. Over the years, I’ve been called ambiguous, ambivalent, and even androgenous by people impressed by the fact that I use my left hand for something other than a wedding ring holder, but the truth is, I am not ambidextrous.
I would like to be. Multiple sclerosis hit my right side first and even though it eventually affected both sides, the right is definitely the most impaired. I am now MSbidextrous. Yes, I just made that up. No, I’m not going to try to copyright or trademark it. What I mean is….what I needed a new word for is MS forcing my non-dominant hand into a dominant role. Maybe dominant isn’t the right word. If my left hand wasn’t impaired at all and if I were truly ambidextrous, then “dominant” would fit the bill. Since neither of those is the case and instead, I’m forced by MS to primarily use the hand it impairs the least, I needed a more fitting word.
The shoe’s on the other foot…….well actually, the glove’s on the other hand now. I’m mostly typing this left handed and having to make myself occasionally use what was once my dominant hand. I suppose I can’t really call it that anymore, but I guess I still think of myself as right handed even if MS has made me an awkward, unwilling lefty.