It hit me while watching the movie “Marley and Me” with my family.
Owen Wilson is left-handed!
I have noticed how quickly I notice left-handed people. Watching a movie. Watching a television show. Signing some forms at a store or business. (Even the science-fiction novel The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. Read carefully and there is a single passing reference that most of the inhabitants of Anarres are left-handed.)
“Hmm. Left-handed”.
Sometimes what tips me off is where that person wears their watch. Left-handers tend to wear their watch on the right hand.
On an overnight trip to Houston with the Baptist Campus Ministry our intrepid van driver – left-handed. We had quite the conversation about this.
Why is it that we notice each other? Why do we think of ourselves as this invisible tribe? We are not particularly oppressed. Especially in the west where no one particularly cares which hand you use. In many countries you are not supposed to touch people with your left hand because that is the uh washing/wiping hand. It is considered dirty. My Chinese friends (most of my parishioners are Chinese) quickly notice that I use my left hand and express their surprise. “You use your left hand?!?” Apparently in China very few people use their left hand – and partly because of social custom and pressure. (As was once true in the United States or so my left-handed grandfather told me.)
Okay there are occasional minor ways in which the world does “discriminates” against us. Watches (where are the buttons?). Many power tools (how is the handle designed? where is the dead-man’s switch?). Firearms (many rifles the hot cartridge flies out and hits you in the face if you hold it left-handed). Heck – even the space shuttle discriminates (all the joysticks are designed to be grasped by the right hand – there is no way you can hold them with the left).
Granted we generally accomodate. I golf, throw frisbee, play guitar, use scissors, use a computer mouse right-handed. I understand there are websites out there that sell nothing but products designed for left-handers. Do you know how hard it is to find a good left-handed baseball glove?!?
Half of United States presidents are left-handed. Half! That is remarkable and makes one wonder.
During the presidential election this came up on BaptistLife.Com. Turns out many forum participants are left-handed! And – this is interesting – for a brief shining moment liberals centrists and conservatives all regarded themselves as “brothers”. Members of the same invisible tribe that transcends our otherwise profound theological and political differences.
Why do we notice each other?
