A TRUE MINORITY

Ever been told you were a bit different? Ever had the feeling you were the odd man out? Ever felt the world was made for someone else? Well, if you are one of those people they call a southpaw, you know the feeling. I learned the feeling when I was about five years old. Had broken my arm severely, and doctors told my parents I would lose some of the use of it. On removal of the cast it was stiff as a proverbial board. On returning home from the hospital, I returned to the normal routine of our home. As the years have displayed for all to see, I like to eat. During that first meal with the family the subject was introduced. "Would David now become right-handed?". With taunts from my older sister (they have a mean streak in them) "Ha Ha, you now have to eat with your right hand". I set out to prove the world wrong and I was right, or at the least, still left- handed. With fork in hand and an elbow that pointed skyward, I dug in for all I was worth. Now more than a half century later, I still go for it with the left hand and with a good as new left arm. Was it just persistence on my part? Was there some voice inside that urged me on? Just how left-handed can a left-hander be? As the years were to roll by I was to learn more than I had expected on that day when I was a youth. Unless you are one of those people, a southpaw, you will need to learn just what being left-handed forebodes for that awkward minority in your midst. The trials and tribulations only start at the dining table. May I offer a small list of inconveniences, some that are encountered day to day. The public telephone, it requires you to hold the headset with the left hand, then dial and insert coins with the right hand. The plight of a boy trying to play baseball, with a glove for a right-hander. Fortunately there are baseball bats without prejudices, as to which hand you hold it with. To the above you can add fishing reels, scissors, teachers that instruct you to hold your paper and pen like the other kids. Hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols that like to eject into the face of a shooter, that dares to hold them in his or her left hand. The development of new products, ones that are designed for the right hand, continues to this day. Even the computer keyboard I employ to type this paper, is anti left hand. The placement of the number keys is on the right, makes them all but useless to me. For most of my sixty odd years, I accepted the fact I was a lefty and tried to make the best of it. I knew I was not the only one so inclined, nor had I been the first and sure not to be the last. I was just odd and clumsy. Or was I? Some twenty years ago, I was to learn something that would forever change my opinion of myself and all southpaws. It began with the reading of a anthropological site report (Epstein, 1960). This was a description of artifact material recovered and opinions on their use, from a site in west Texas. A large shelter used by early man during the Archaic period. The Archaic period places man in that period of time after the big game animals had disappeared from North America and before he was introduced to tribal living. Commonly referred to as caveman. To give this period a time frame, we would be close by saying it started some nine to ten thousand years ago, and ended shortly before what we call the Christian era. A span of eight thousand years or more. This was a very exciting period for the development of man, as we know him. He would develop such crafts as weaving, the use of clay in his cooking oven, the refinement of stone tools and hunting points. Even the mind would develop during this period. By the time he joined his neighbors, to form tribes, he had come to realize there was a power greater than he could explain. He would demonstrate this in his cave paintings, his burials, even how he lived amidst his own kind. From a prehistoric time, there will forever be gaps in what we know of this early man. But there was one artifact he left behind, one he little realized would tell much about him. Small bits of twisted fibers, some used to bind his weavings, some to carry his loads, some to make his toys. To return to the report that captured my attention, among the many forms of mans crafts, that had been recovered, a sampling and description of fiber cords recovered. Over a hundred and seventy of them. The author described how the cords had been made and a few of the uses they had been put to. In addition there was a description of a group of unusual cords. While most had been put together using two strands of twisted fibers, there had been some using three and four strands. Only a small percentage of the total, these odds were the ones that caught my attention. The report- Centipede and Damp Cave, by Jeromiah F. Epstein. 1958. University of Texas. Austin, Texas Sept. 1960

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