Being left-handed isn’t a matter of personality, but sometimes it might just as well be after seeing how much of daily life proves its existence. Making up about 10% of the population, we don’t quite seem large enough for the world to accommodate, but large enough for humans to observe and comment on incessantly. “Oh, you’re left-handed? That’s so cool! They say, as you fumble with a streak of ink on your pinky and try to twist your wrist around the metal rod of your notebook.
Writing left-handed is not something one does casually—it’s an obstacle course. While right-handers get to sloppily drag their pens across the page, lefties get to drive. That is right: instead of gliding along smoothly like a swan, we’re pushing the pen before us like a snowplow, trying to create legible words while simultaneously smearing everything we just wrote. It’s a battle against ink-drying time. And spoiler: the ink always wins.
You’d think we’d just use a pencil, but then there’s the silver-gray smudge that labels you as a leftie before you’ve even opened your mouth. And don’t even talk about fancy pens. Fountain pens? Gel pens? A crime scene waiting to happen. Notebooks are a whole other issue, whoever invented spiral binding must have hated us. The rings dig into your hand, you can’t write anywhere near the edge, and if you are one of the fortunate ones, you get to experience the joy of twisting your wrist into a crab claw just to fit your writing onto the page. A few of us have even resorted to turning our notebooks upside down like lunatics in an attempt to adapt. Normal? No. Necessary? Absolutely
Unfortunately, yes.
Interestingly, there’s one tiny corner of my world where left-handed writing no longer seems odd: Hebrew. It’s written right to left, so finally—b’kitat evreet—I get to pull the pen across the page the way nature intended. No smudge, no wacky angles, no ink on the hand. Bliss. Sweet, fleeting bliss.
The point is, being left-handed is not an everyday tragedy. But it is a constant series of little frustrating reminders that most everything wasn’t made for you. From desks to scissors to computer mice, you’re constantly working around the design, not with it. Writing just so happens to be the most glaring—and the messiest.
So no, we’re not asking for sympathy. Just faster-drying ink. Or spiral notebooks that don’t feel like medieval torture devices. Or maybe just a little more awareness that not everyone writes like they’re supposed to. Until then, we’ll keep flipping our notebooks upside down and pretending it’s totally normal. Left-handers unite—in smudge and in struggle.