Ambisinister
Apr. 21st, 2026 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI'm at about 9.5 kHz this morning, but that does vary a bit depending on whether or not I've just blown my nose; the main obstruction seems to be in my left ear, which I think is the (slightly) dominant one.
It is generally difficult trying to decide which side of me is dominant. The only place where it's easy is my eyes. I have a dominant right eye. Everything else either goes mildly one way or the other, or there's no strong dominance at all. In particular, I don't have any noticeable hand dominance. On scientific tests I come out very weakly right-handed, but that can easily be attributed to my parents declaring me right-handed when I was a child because they didn't know it was possible not to have a clear hand dominance. (They didn't have any problem if someone was clearly left-handed, I hasten to add. My sister was, and they didn't give her any trouble about it at all. But I was told off for not using my right hand because apparently it wasn't possible to be left-handed half the time. I did go back to doing things in a way that was more natural for me when I wasn't being watched.)
In fact, it's a little bit more complicated than that. While it's true that there are quite a lot of things I can do equally well with either hand, and quite a lot more that I have been conditioned into doing right-handed but wouldn't take much practice to be able to do equally well left-handed (writing being in this category; I spent a couple of weeks at university being unable to use my right hand due to a thumb injury, and my consequent left-handed notes were a bit slower than normal but still perfectly readable), there are also certain things for which I definitely do have a preferred hand. And it's not always the same hand, either. My left arm is noticeably stronger than my right arm; I don't know whether it is like that by nature or simply because I've always preferred to carry things in my left hand, but, of course, the fact that it's stronger does reinforce that preference. The same goes for anything requiring the admittedly rather modest amount of oomph I possess; if it needs strength, I will automatically do it left-handed. On the other hand I very much prefer my right hand for sewing; my left hand is not incapable in that respect, and there are times when it's very useful to be able to use both at once, but the right hand is my primary sewing hand.
And then there's the computer mouse. When I first started using a mouse, I was still convinced I was essentially right-handed because I'd been told I was (despite the considerable body of evidence which demonstrates that it's not at all as simple as that; mind you, at that stage I was also still convinced I was ugly and several other extremely negative characteristics, for exactly the same reason). And mice are generally set up for right-handers in any case as default, though you can alter them. So I duly set up the mouse on the right side of the computer and tried to use it.
It went all over the place. I struggled horribly.
I was puzzled. This ought to be intuitive; and one of the negative labels I had managed to shake off by this time was "clumsy", so I knew it wasn't that. Maybe it just needed a bit of practice? I carried on, and continued to struggle horribly, until I finally had the bright idea of swapping it over to the other side. Perhaps my left hand would cope with this thing better.
It did. Very much better. I was now suddenly using a mouse like a normal adult rather than a toddler with ADHD. I didn't bother swapping the buttons over because I didn't know how to do it at the time (this was, after all, my first mouse), so I got used to having them where they were, and that is still the set-up I use. Mouse on left side, buttons as per usual. I do all my digital painting with the mouse, at that, so it is not simply the case that my right hand does the fiddly work and my left hand does the donkey work. There literally aren't any nice simple lines you can draw regarding my left/right balance.
My parents liked nice simple lines, so they drew them regardless. I don't have to bother about those now.
It is generally difficult trying to decide which side of me is dominant. The only place where it's easy is my eyes. I have a dominant right eye. Everything else either goes mildly one way or the other, or there's no strong dominance at all. In particular, I don't have any noticeable hand dominance. On scientific tests I come out very weakly right-handed, but that can easily be attributed to my parents declaring me right-handed when I was a child because they didn't know it was possible not to have a clear hand dominance. (They didn't have any problem if someone was clearly left-handed, I hasten to add. My sister was, and they didn't give her any trouble about it at all. But I was told off for not using my right hand because apparently it wasn't possible to be left-handed half the time. I did go back to doing things in a way that was more natural for me when I wasn't being watched.)
In fact, it's a little bit more complicated than that. While it's true that there are quite a lot of things I can do equally well with either hand, and quite a lot more that I have been conditioned into doing right-handed but wouldn't take much practice to be able to do equally well left-handed (writing being in this category; I spent a couple of weeks at university being unable to use my right hand due to a thumb injury, and my consequent left-handed notes were a bit slower than normal but still perfectly readable), there are also certain things for which I definitely do have a preferred hand. And it's not always the same hand, either. My left arm is noticeably stronger than my right arm; I don't know whether it is like that by nature or simply because I've always preferred to carry things in my left hand, but, of course, the fact that it's stronger does reinforce that preference. The same goes for anything requiring the admittedly rather modest amount of oomph I possess; if it needs strength, I will automatically do it left-handed. On the other hand I very much prefer my right hand for sewing; my left hand is not incapable in that respect, and there are times when it's very useful to be able to use both at once, but the right hand is my primary sewing hand.
And then there's the computer mouse. When I first started using a mouse, I was still convinced I was essentially right-handed because I'd been told I was (despite the considerable body of evidence which demonstrates that it's not at all as simple as that; mind you, at that stage I was also still convinced I was ugly and several other extremely negative characteristics, for exactly the same reason). And mice are generally set up for right-handers in any case as default, though you can alter them. So I duly set up the mouse on the right side of the computer and tried to use it.
It went all over the place. I struggled horribly.
I was puzzled. This ought to be intuitive; and one of the negative labels I had managed to shake off by this time was "clumsy", so I knew it wasn't that. Maybe it just needed a bit of practice? I carried on, and continued to struggle horribly, until I finally had the bright idea of swapping it over to the other side. Perhaps my left hand would cope with this thing better.
It did. Very much better. I was now suddenly using a mouse like a normal adult rather than a toddler with ADHD. I didn't bother swapping the buttons over because I didn't know how to do it at the time (this was, after all, my first mouse), so I got used to having them where they were, and that is still the set-up I use. Mouse on left side, buttons as per usual. I do all my digital painting with the mouse, at that, so it is not simply the case that my right hand does the fiddly work and my left hand does the donkey work. There literally aren't any nice simple lines you can draw regarding my left/right balance.
My parents liked nice simple lines, so they drew them regardless. I don't have to bother about those now.
