Why does the right hand get all the good jobs, like greeting visiting dignitaries (such a pleasure) , or blowing farewell kisses to the one you love (such sweet sorrow) , or playing the melody while the left has to oompah along in the bass? Right-handers get the best adjectives too. I mean, we’d all like to be adroit (as the French have it) . So why do we poor southpaws have to be gauche or, while we’re about it, gawky? Tactless, without grace, ungainly, awkward, physically and socially inept, that’s us. And Latin’s no better. We’d like to be dextrous too. What makes us sinister? Was Dracula left-handed, or something?
Even when we can hammer or saw or paint or drive a ***** with either hand equally, or cut the nails on both sets of fingers, they only say we are ambi- dextrous, which is a bit of a left-handed compliment, treating the left as if it were an honorary right, as if it had no right to be skilful in its own right.
I suppose my left hand ought to be grateful (in this respect) that I was not born into a tradition where it is laid down what each hand can do. It could have been condemned to a lifetime of bottom-wiping and not much else, and becoming cack- handed in more ways than one.