It’s try out new scented candles week in the office, and today’s first choice just got house vetoed by my wife, who works across the house as far away as one can be from the office.
The charge? It smelled like diapers in the rest of the house. That’s okay. I was sitting in the room with it, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what library they had ever been in that made them think that’s what libraries smell like. I didn’t get diapers out of it, but it wasn’t old, wonderful books, either.
Pass and try again later.
I’m left-handed. What that means in my particular case is that I’ve lived my whole life not really knowing which hand I should be using for any given task until I sit down and guess, failing 50% of the time, sometimes twice, and trying my best to move on.
Now, I write with a pen, swing a baseball bat, eat with a fork, and do dozens of other things left-handed. It is definitely my dominant hand. But over the years there have been some things that I’ve just had to learn to do with my hand in order to get along better in the world.
It’s not really ambidexterity, those with that gift are truly fortunate. It’s more of a kind of forced pseudo-ambidex, though I am better off than some left-handers, and likely the majority of right-handers, when it comes to switching things up and using the opposite hand for any given task.
It’s a right-handers’ world, and if you’ve never stopped to think about it, I invite you to. Some people are so left-handed, unable to adapt to do anything with their right hand, that the condition is now being recognized as a disability. In that respect I feel fortunate that I am able to force or train my right hand to jump into the game when needed. It’s not always needed.
And that’s when I went bowling on Saturday night with my RPG group.
Okay, I’m not super in shape, but I’m not a lazy git, either. I go to the gym and do cardio several times a week. But this constant and consistent activity did NOT prepare me for bowling.
By the end of the first set, I had pulled several muscles in my left side posterior and upper leg. Wow. I was not expecting that. Then, one of our party broke a fingernail to the point that she had to try to bowl left-handed, and it hit me!
No, she wasn’t that bad with her left hand. I mean, sure, gutter ball is more her game at that point, and I was more disappointed that she managed to hit pins rather than roll twenty straight gutters. But no, I would also bowl left-handed, as a show of solidarity and camaraderie. I usually bowl right, and I figured that it might help balance out the pulled and strained muscles.
Well, I was kinda right. By the end of the night, I had pulled muscles in both posteriors and upper legs. Symmetry achieved.
Aha!
There’s the diapers.
D.G.