If You Are a South-Paw, You MUST Buy a Pair of Left-Handed Scissors

Being left-handed is a bigger deal than most right-handed people realize. Only in recent years did manufacturers become aware of the huge market they were neglecting by failing to manufacture special products for left-handed people.

I am so glad that someone finally came up with the idea of making a pair of scissors for people like me. No more sore thumb from hours of trying to cut heavy material with the scissors ridge slanting the wrong direction. I love my left-handed scissors. (If you right-handers don't know what I mean, try using your regulars scissors with your left hand.

Over the years, I have heard people say, "I don't see much difference between being left-handed or right handed." Apparently, they do not know that left-handed people, officially called sinistrals, were once considered witches to be put to death. Others were labeled mentally deficient or possessed by demons.

Approximately 1 out of 10 people in the United States is left-handed and 2 out of 3 of those are males.
No one seems to know why.

When I was young, my parents and teachers tried in vain to get me to use scissors and to write with my right hand. Finally, they decided that if I was going to write at all they would have to let me do it with my left hand. That, in itself, brought up a problem during penmanship class. When you write left-handed with a fountain pen your arm drags across whatever you have just written as you progress to the end of the line, resulting in a horribly smeared paper, and ink all over your sleeve. It was a red-letter day when the ball-point pen, which wrote dry, was introduced.

Some other annoying things that plague left-handed people are steam irons with the cord coming out of the wrong side, guitars with the strings going the wrong way, (you can restring them, but it is a real nuisance),
calculators with the function keys on the right side, garden scythes with the blade pointing the wrong direction, etc. Is it any wonder that left-handers have more accidents and actually die at a younger age than those who are right-handed? Life as a left-hander is just too awkward. Trying to reach the safety shut-off switch that is mounted on the right side of a piece of dangerous equipment can be more than a bit difficult for a left-hander.

But, due to people like those who came up with the idea of making left-handed scissors for people like me, perhaps those statistics will start to change. Maybe car doors will begin to open at the push of a button instead of an awkward switching of one hand to another to try to get inside. Maybe fishing poles will be sold with reels that can be wound with the left hand instead of the right, and maybe safety switches of the future will be mounted on both sides of a piece of dangerous equipment.

In the meantime, I will continue to use my left-handed scissors which I have used over the years to create a lot of clothes for my children, including a wedding dress, bridesmaids' dresses, and even one for the flower girl. Due to my left-handed scissors, I have probably made as many quilts, rag dolls, shorts, slacks, etc. as any of my right-handed friends. The scissors are the only thing I own that were made specifically for left-handers, and I treasure it as one of my most useful and prized possessions. Without them, I would probably have given up on sewing years ago.

Howevr, the scissors did not change other areas of my life. Left-handers, as a group, are still viewed as being a little different, a little odd. And, even though I can at claim to be in good company with famous fellow-lefties, like President George Bush, Ted Koppel, Oprah Winfrey, Don Rickles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Thomas Edison, I know and they know, or knew, that we still have a long way to go.

I wonder if I am the only one of that famous group who owns her very own pair of left-handed scissors?