If you are right-handed, have you ever tried using scissors with your left hand?

[Duer 157099]

Can there be anything more impossible or frustrating?

If you have never had the pleasure, try it sometime. Someone should invent scissors that can cut no matter which hand holds them.

Or have I just been buying cheap assed scissors my whole life?

[KurtNYC]

1. throwing a ball left handed is more fun

bc I look ridiculous doing it!

I remember in 1st grade we got those little scissors that only hold a thumb and one finger, like sewing scissors. Uncomfortable but ambidextrous.

[Duer 157099]

2. I don't think scissors *can* be ambidextrous in the sense that I am meaning

Because I don't think it's the scissors fault, but the fault of our non-dominant hand that doesn't have the correct muscle development or something.

Like throwing the ball example, it's not the ball's design that is at fault.

[KurtNYC]

3. I mean those crappy little scissors that fit either hand the same

uncomfortable way. And maybe the word is "bidextrous"

[eyepaddle]

18. Yeah, it has to do with the mechanics of how the blades mesh at the cutting point.

The handles are a distant second in their importance to the "handedness" of the scissors.

Here's a tip: try backing away from what you are cutting a bit--in other wrords cut closer to the tip of the blades and further away from te handles. I'm not sure if they are just sharper there, or of the tendency to bend what is being cut is reduced.

FYI Yes, I am an ergonomist! ;) I am also ambidestrous (but that is a long amd boring story).

[Avalux]

4. They make left-handed scissors,

but I'm not sure about ambidextrous. My grandmother was a left-handed seamstress; all her scissors were 'backwards' - right-handed people like me couldn't use them. :D

[donheld]

15. I shared a desk with a guy who had left handed scissors

I hated those things, only cuz they didn't work for me and they were always in the way.

[blogslut]

5. That's how I discovered I am ambidextrious

I remember bounding to get my left-handed scissors from my teacher. I felt so special, they had green handles! I then proceeded to place them in my right hand and was unable to make them work.

I write, draw and eat with my left hand. I use scissors and operate my computer mouse with my right hand.

[Kali]

6. interesting!

I'm such a spaz with my left.
My Grandfather was - although he always said it was the teachers when he was in school making him use his right, but he did cowboy things with either hand.

[blogslut]

7. My brother was forced to write with his right hand

He's not a major klutz but his handwriting is awful. I don't know if he does other stuff with his left hand. He's 8 years older than me and that's the way it was when he was a kid.

What is really odd is that I mostly draw with a computer these days - a Thinkpad, it has an eraser mouse. I can't for the life of me draw worth a crap with my left hand on my laptop. But, give me a pad and a pencil or a Wacom tablet, and I resort to my left hand.

[Kali]

8. yeah he had bad handwriting for sure

the ONLY thing I do with my left hand is hold reins when riding a horse and back in school it was the book-carrying arm. At one point if I tried to write with that hand it would come out backward or mirrored, can't do that anymore.

[soleiri]

10. I loved my green handled scissors.

I write, eat and draw with my left hand. I can cook, use scissors, operate computer mouse and play sports (throw, catch, hit, etc. ) with either hand.

I think most left handed people are able to use their right hand more so than a right handed person can use their left hand.

The right handed world that we live in kind of forces us to use it.

[Moondog]

9. I'm right handed, but I can do

most things left handed too. Not as well, generally, but adequately.

Two exceptions - my handwriting is illegible right handed, and downright spastic left handed. On the other hand (heh), I am a pretty good pistol shot right handed, but I'm a crack shot left handed. Why? Who knows.

According to one of my quacks, this is all a good thing should I ever have a major stroke, and survive it. Yeah, she's real upbeat about all kinds of things ....

[nickinSTL]

13. same here

though my handwriting is legible if I want it to be - ie, if other people are going to have to read it.

My wife actually prefers that I write left-handed, because I have to take a little more time, and the letters are a bit more carefully (and therefore legibly) formed than when I write right-handed.

I've never done any shooting (aside from bow and arrow and a bb gun), neither of which I tried left handed, as far as I can remember, so not sure on that.

One time I was visiting my uncle and one of his wife's family saw me eating left-handed, which I do frequently, and commented that if she tried that, it would be a great diet plan. I'm pretty much ambidextrous when eating, so that diet plan doesn't work for me :)

[eyepaddle]

20. Which eye is your dominant eye? As I understand it you shoot with whichever eye is better

regardless of which hand may be dominant.

[bigwillq]

11. Tried it

Not awful at it.

[Glassunion]

12. What!? Are you anti-sinistrate?

Welcome to my world. I'm in the 11% group at the other end of the spectrum.

Not to mention, scissors, you have can openers, manual pencil sharpeners, mice, and most tools are all designed to be operated with the right hand.

We die sooner on average.

The word sinister comes from the Latin word for "left", not to mention it is also our word to leave something. WTF!?

But hey, we got Jimmy Hendrix and Curt Cobain bitches! Of course both died early. Shit!

On edit: anti-sinistrate is my word. MINE!

[eyepaddle]

22. Don't wrry too much about that "life expectancy" bit...

Most critiques I have heard think that the reason there are fewer old lefties than old righties is that the pressure to enforce right-handedness was stronger in the old days so the older you get demographically the less likely you are to be left handed. I am unaware of any epidemiology that tracked individuals' handedness and age at death specifically.

Here's an odd tidbit: my wife is ETREMELY left handed, and she thought she always used left handed can openers (because that is the hand which closes the handles!) She was rather surprised when I showed her in the store that they were in fact right handed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. I'm left-handed, but I use a scissors right-handed because they

don't work otherwise. I also open doors right-handed because otherwise you end up having to do a little pirouette to get through the doorway.

[petronius]

16. As a lefty in a world of right-handed scissors (etc), I am oh so torn up over

your momentary inconvenience... :nopity:


:P

[Duer 157099]

17. I think many people have misunderstood what I meant

The utensil itself has nothing to do with the phenomenon. It has to do with the muscles in the dominant hand, and how they simply cannot accomplish the same action when the non-dominant hand attempts to do so.

Scissors just happen to be an implement whose design involves applying pressure from one side.

Unless... if I tried using left-handed scissors with my left hand, would I succeed? Maybe that is the issue and it's *me* who is missing the point? :shrug:

[petronius]

19. Scissors are asymmetrical, so it does matter which hand you use

Most scissors are 'right-handed' - the tendency is for a right-handed user to push the blades together while a left-handed user would push the blades apart. It really is the design of the utensil (I did think that's what you were joking about).

As a lefty I've gotten in the habit of cutting with my right hand to avoid the frustration, but yes, you would be more successful with the left hand if you used a left-handed pair of scissors...

[Duer 157099]

24. Now I need to acquire some lefty scissors to try this out

I can't believe I've been ignorant about this my whole life :rofl: Oh well

[quakerboy]

21. I think you are on to something there

I am a rightie, but I can use my sisters left handed scissors with my left hand. As long as I remember they are left handed.

As best I recall, it has to do with the shape of the handles, and where your hand puts pressure. If you use it with the wrong hand, unless you really contort your hand, the pressure to close the sheers also pushes the blades away from each other, and thus allowing things to slip between rather than be shorn apart.

[Duer 157099]

23. Well it only took me half a century to finally figure it out

LOL, ok yeah I can be slow about some things!

[hobbit709]

25. I'm left handed, deal with that constantly.

I now have a pair of left handed scissors.