Sure, they’re all former presidents, but dig deeper.
How about Billy Corgan (formerly of the Smashing Pumpkins), surf guitarist Dick Dale and the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain?
Besides being important political or music icons, these six characters share a rare but honorable trait.
They’re all lefties.
Roughly one in 10 people are left-handed, but having this rare characteristic isn’t always as wonderful as it seems.
A prime example of this is lecture halls on campus. If you counted, maybe you’d come up with anywhere from 10 to 15 total desks per room designed for the lefty - and that number is being generous.
Very generous.
“Ninety-five percent of those desks are designed for righties, and it’s quite a big pain to take notes during class,” packaging junior Tim Marley said. “I get angry because there are so few seats designed for left-handed people.”
But this discrimination isn’t something new, and lefties have been historically demonized.
According to “gauche! Left-Handers in Society,” a Web site designed by M.K. Holder, director of the Handedness Research Institute at Indiana University, small children have been accused of being in cahoots with the devil or of being a Communist simply for trying to use their left hand.
In the ’40s, psychiatrist Abram Blau said “being left-handed is a neurotic choice made by anti-social individuals.”
Even the origin of the word “sinister” is “left-handed.”
Holder said every day a small child somewhere is abused for using his or her more capable hand - when it is the left hand.
“In many countries, including the U.S., there has been a relaxation of the prejudice against left-handedness,” Holder said. “However, children are still often forced to switch hands.”
Phil Shapiro is an educator from Arlington, Va. His late father went to elementary school in the ’30s and experienced some of those same situations.
“My father grew up in a rural area that wasn’t enlightened at the time, and they forced people to write with their right hand,” he said. “When they did that, people started stuttering.
“It’s just a terrible thing for a school teacher to try to change that - they felt there was something wrong with the person because they weren’t right-handed.”
Marley experienced some difficulty as well, while doing calligraphy in a high school art class.
“The way the pens work, they’re designed for right-handed people,” he said. “For lefties, you have to turn the paper at a completely different angle, and you’re almost writing on your side.”
Holder said that while researchers have a general idea of the causes of right-handedness in human populations, the precise details are not fully understood.
“There is evidence for genetic influence for handedness, however
