• nocturne@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    This shows abuse more than anything. He was likely forced to use his right hand growing up and has never fully recovered.

      • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Yeah, that episode was basically making the point that he’s from a generation where being different was considered wrong, and abusive behavior corrections were an option.

        The boomers went through some stuff. Ned included.

        • yucandu@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I watched some movie set in the boomer era where a kid’s dad died suddenly, and at the open-casket funeral, he saw his dad’s dead body and screamed and ran, and all the adults just scolded him and yelled at him. On the day of his own father’s funeral.

          I asked my dad “is that how it was like for everyone back then?” and he said “yup”.

        • nocturne@slrpnk.net
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          5 days ago

          I am gen-X / xenial and I had a friend who, while in elementary school, was forcibly made right handed. One day when we were in our late 30s saw me doing something with my left hand and said that make so much sense and realized he was actually left-handed.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    Need Flanders is definitely old enough to have possibly been forced to work with his right hand, meaning that while his left is his dominant he was forced to use his right enough to be effectively ambidextrous.

    • FreeAZ@sopuli.xyz
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      5 days ago

      Some left handed guitarists play right handed just because left handed guitars are much harder to find, or they just string it like Jimi Hendrix lol. I’m sure that’s true of other tools and hobbies.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        a friend of mine learned how to play upside down as well so he could play any guitar. not to the degree he played lefties but it was still impressive

    • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I am cross dominant. I do somethings right handed, some things left handed, and there’s a few things I can do with either. This blew the mind of every elementary school teacher I had until 4th grade because by then I had the vocabulary to explain myself.

      For many years I only felt comfortable using right handed scissors in my left hand because my kindergarten teacher refused to give me a left handed pair since I write with my right hand. I argued with every adult that tried to teach me how to play baseball because I naturally line up lefty at the plate but I throw better right handed. Turns out I can bat switch but fuck them, they didn’t know that.

      • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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        4 days ago

        I remember being out to dinner with my family and my brother was joking with me about how I would have to struggle to cut up my food being left handed because how the seats were arranged. I just switched to my right and him and a couple other people were like… What?.. I didn’t even know that people used a specific hand for their utensils.

        We never had left handed stuff when I was in school so I guess I just learned on my own.

        • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Oddly, using a fork is something that only feels comfortable with my left hand. I can eat right handed but it feels off somehow.

          • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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            4 days ago

            I’m like that with putting my contacts in. For whatever reason I can do it right handed without any problem but when I use my left hand it’s a shitshow.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I wonder how much of handedness is really “real”. I’m sure there’s a bit of a preference there, but a lot of it might be also training.

        For example, I started using my phone in my “off-hand” years ago to keep my “main-hand” free for other stuff. Turns out I do more on my phone than on my free hand, and now I’m much better with my “off-hand” with my phone than with my “main-hand”.

        • Aganim@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          n=1 of course, but my dad was forced to write right-handed in school (early 60’s and an old-school teacher for those days). The result was more punishment as no matter how he tried, he simply couldn’t (and still cannot) write very readable with his right hand. So no, I don’t think practice is enough to make somebody ambidextrous. Might work for some, but certainly not for everybody.

        • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          It certainly felt real to me growing up. No matter how much teachers would insist that I use scissors right handed, I just couldn’t. That being said, with enough training and descipline you can certainly overcome that. As an adult, I can use scissors in either hand but not particularly well.

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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          4 days ago

          I always felt like a lot of sites and apps were made to be used left handed anyway. It seems like the controls are often on the left side. Maybe it’s just that I primarily used reddit and now lemmy though.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I’m righty for everything except specifically throwing a Frisbee. I just can’t do it with my right hand, unless it’s an overhand chuck. Makes disc golf a bitch because no matter how I throw, it usually breaks right from the spin.

        • absentbird@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          On some courses that’s a big advantage. I always threw left and my dad always threw right, it was interesting how the geometry of the course could tilt our fortunes.

      • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Why :( ?

        We have a skill that most don’t have. Give someone who’s single hand dominant only, a steak. Watch as they constantly have to shuffle the silverware back and forth. Or go play like baseball or racquetball or tennis or badminton, etc. and just keep swapping the hand, it’ll throw them off.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Oh! I had no idea that was very much an Americanism! Next time I travel overseas I’m definitely going to pay more attention to that.

          • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Literally people who don’t know how to properly use silwerware.

            I cannot do pretty much any precise stuff with my left hand. I can however eat perfectly fine without switching the fork to my right hand (unless there is nothing left to cut I sometimes switch).

        • fading_person@lemmy.zip
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          4 days ago

          Why :( ?

          No idea. They did this thinking they were doing a good thing for me, for some reason. It was just ignorance and lack of information from them, I think.

          Well, at one hand, I became ambidextrous, and got no bad side effects that I’m aware of, but on the other hand, this didn’t improve anything in my life. Pun partially intended :D

  • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    Tbf, if they didn’t show him writing with his right hand, this would all be acceptable.

    I write with my left hand, but play guitar right handed, pitch a baseball right handed, do basically everything right handed, except usung my left to write and do knife work in the kitchen.

    Left handed folks are often ambidextrous.

    Not to mention he’s religious and back a number of years, you weren’t allowed to be left handed, so maybe that is why he writes with his right hand in the scene, and maybe why it’s such a liberation for him to come out as left handed? Idk

    • Amputret@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      Technically you are mixed-handed as you use one hand mainly for particular actions, just different hands. Ambidexterity is being able to do anything equally well with either hand.

    • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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      5 days ago

      Left handed folks are often ambidextrous.Not to mention he’s religious and back a number of years, you weren’t allowed to be left handed, so maybe that is why he writes with his right hand in the scene

      I had a teacher in high school who wrote poorly with both hands, he explained, because he went to a catholic school where they slapped his left hand with a ruler when wrote with it.

      • tmyakal@infosec.pub
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        4 days ago

        Yep, same situation for me. “Ambidextrous” roughly means “two right hands,” so I like to joke that I’m ambisinistral - I’ve got two left hands.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 days ago

      You sound like you’re right handed and just happen to write with your left. Lol

      But really, your “definition” wouldn’t be ambidextrous. That’s for people who can do most tasks pretty much equally with either hand.

      You would be known as “cross dominant”. That’s where you’re better with one hand or the other, depending on what task it is.

      I’m a fairly standard lefty myself, Im able to do most things pretty well with my right hand, but mostly always best with my left.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      I’m right handed for writing but I prefer left for a lot of stuff. I ride primarily left forward on skateboard and snowboard. Throughout my childhood years everyone fucking hated my lefty hockey stick especially since the three lefties played right handed. Some games they forced me to either play right hand or sit out too.

  • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    When need was young, you weren’t allowed to BE left handed, even if you were. They forced you to do things right handedly, so Ned learned to do the things he does with his right hand, but in his soul he is left handed, as he’s always had to work really hard at learning things with his right. He wanted to change the world for the better.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      My dad is like that. He writes with his right hand because he was beaten at school by the nuns if he tried to do anything with his left hand, but he essentially does everything else with his left. It was quite a traumatic experience for him.

      • Thrawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        While you are most definitely correct his parents wouldn’t do that; schools back then absolutely did enforce that and he clearly did still go through school.

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    a couple years ago some friends on a community driven wargame community and I were engaging in a worldbuilding discussion, creating factions and armies and such for our world

    I Said “Im going to have a leftist insurgency” and everyone groaned. "why do you have to make it political cant we just have silly scifi tropes

    “Who said anything about politics, 95% of your units are holding their weapons in their right hand. this is a left handed faction”

    them

    It was Lego, by the way…

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I love that their assumption was that their highly fractured society going to war with one another wasn’t political. What do people think politics is?

  • Jerkface@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    And where exactly was he supposed to find a left-handed bowling ball? Huh? D’jever think of that?

    • StuffYouFear@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Not sure if your serious but I’m a left handed bowler. You normally buy the bowling balls without holes, then have a shop measure your hand and how you throw and drill the holes to based on you.

  • drhodl@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I’m 70 years old, so maybe things have changed, but my left handed brother was FORCED to use his right hand for everything, as we were growing up. Apparently left handedness is a sign of the devil, or some such crap. As a result, he was effectively ambidextrous, as an adult.

    • daq@lemmy.sdf.org
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      4 days ago

      Which country did you grow up in out of curiosity? They definitely did this in soviet union because it was more optimal to not have to design anything for minority of left handed people.

      • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        the bridge is arranged a certain way (some of them have ridges in slightly different spots for the endpoint of each string) so restringing it would be… unpleasant. more involved than just the strings. some of them, the body of the guitar is shaped to hug your body. I can think of a few different guitars in the family collection and why it wouldn’t work, but like, it’s usually more complicated than just the strings

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        In a lot of cases the body of the guitar is different.

        Some acoustic guitars like this one:

        might work fine strung backwards; you might have to do a bit of alteration to the bridge and the nut, and you might put on a second pick guard, but you can probably Lefty that Righty.

        A guitar with a bite taken out of the body like this:

        That bite is so that it’s easier to reach the base of the fretboard where the high pitch meedly meedly notes live. If you flip that guitar over, the notch is on the wrong side. You can still play it, but the point of that notch has been eliminated.

        Acoustic-electric guitars, such as most Ovations, have their controls or built-in tuners on the sidewall that would face “up” when held and played, making that a pain to use upside down. Possibly literally if sitting down because the knobs would dig into your thigh.

        Electric guitars like the Fender Stratocaster:

        Are 1. surprisingly heavy because the body is solid wood, it’s not hollow like an acoustic, and 2. are carved to fit a human body. You can see in that image the relief for your side in the back and for your elbow on the front. The tremolo lever (“whammy bar”) is in an asymmetric location so that it can be both used and moved out of the way. The knobs and switch are convenient yet out of the way of strumming. The cord socket is designed to point the cord down and away. If you use this guitar upside down, you defeat all those ergonomics, the guitar would become difficult and uncomfortable to hold and use. Didn’t stop Jimi Hendrix, who famously played a Stratocaster upside down.

        I’m left handed and a guitarist, and I assert that a standard guitar IS left handed. The intricate work of fingering on the frets is done with the left hand, the large gross movements of strumming is done with the right. I’m perfectly comfortable using a standard guitar, yet most of the right handed people who have asked me to teach them to play have wanted to hold the guitar the other way, neck in right hand.

        • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I’m left handed and a guitarist, and I assert that a standard guitar IS left handed.

          i play electric bass (badly) and am a leftie and agree

          • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 days ago

            This is so interesting. I play bass right handed, standard. The lefty bass felt so weird. What an interesting thought. The left hand is the one doing the most work.

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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              5 days ago

              Yes this exactly. Even playing fingerpick style with the right hand doing some intricate work, I’m really concentrating on my left hand and my right hand just abides.

            • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              I know right? My primary instrument is sax, so they both feel a little off but righty feels better than lefty. I think my hands/wrists are just in the same arrangement (right hand low, left hand wherever the fuck it’s going) for righty bass as my favorite sax.

        • dvlsg@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Drums are similar. Playing “right handed” puts your left hand on the snare, generally.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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        5 days ago

        Jimi Hendrix famously did this, but it’s not without its drawbacks. Some models are more problematic than others.

        An acoustic like this would probably be pretty straightforward.

    • absentbird@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I play guitar right handed because I was taught by a right handed person and those were the only guitars he had. Right privilege is real.

    • nocturne@slrpnk.net
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      5 days ago

      They are not actually, at least the dozen or so I looked at on Sweetwater before buying my leftie. They right-handed selection is better, but the price was the same.

  • Deacon@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    This rings true of my experience as a left handed person, which is more like being ambidextrous, at least for people who were born at the tail end of society tending to think you’re evil if born left handed.