I'd say one unique thing about me is being left-handed. You may be thinking, “That's not a talent! You were born with it how is that special?” I don't think that this trait is necessarily impressive or hard to achieve, I have just recently realized how weird it is to live in a right hand-dominant world. It's the little things that us left-handers have conformed to, unaware that we are mimicking our opposites. To start with--scissors! I didn't realize how awkward it felt cutting things until I got a pair of left-handed scissors. Another thing is holding things in everyday life. In the picture, I am holding the cup in my right hand because that is what feels natural to me. This is because cups are traditionally placed on the right side of the plate, and growing up it was easier to use my right hand to reach it.

Not only that but notebooks are designed to accommodate people writing with their right hand. Heck, even the way we write things is more convenient for right-handed people. My hand gets ten times more smudged! This all sounds like a terrible way to live, but honestly it rarely bothers me. The funniest thing is that most people exclaim, “You're left-handed?!” when they see me writing, but I don't notice the difference. Also, in high school playing tennis my teammates and I complained about playing against left-handers because we were used to hitting against right-handers.

Something I found intriguing in my psychology class is that left-handed people were considered cursed for a long time because studies showed that they had a higher mortality rate at a young age. This however proved that correlation is in fact NOT causation. I once asked my uncle why his handwriting was so bad (it is appropriate to use “chicken scratch” for it) and he told me his mom forced him to be right-handed when he was young, even though he was originally left-handed. My mom also told me that she would try to place a crayon on my right side so I would grab it with my right hand, but gave up after I kept using my left hand.

In other words, the odds are not in my favor when it comes to the dominant hand!