Scissors (and southpaws)

[macloudt at yahoo.co.uk]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Tasha--Nethilia <nethilia at y...> wrote:
> 
> > The green-and-blue plastic ones are the horrors I
> > had in mind, BTW.  
> > It is a well-known fact that no one has ever, to
> > this day, 
> > successfully cut a piece of paper with those
> > so-called scissors.
> 
> Especially not me. I remeber the horrors of those
> blasted scissors. They wouldn't cut through wet toilet
> paper.

My 2 older kids are 3 and 4 and are stuck with using these crappy 
things right now.  Elizabeth (the elder) just gives up after a while 
and rips whatever she wanted to cut.  Gareth (the younger) will not 
be allowed a sharp pair of scissors (or any other potential weapon of 
destruction) until he is sent to an out-of-town university.


 But what really used to irk me were the left
> handed scissors. See, I'm left handed (really, I'm
> more towards ambidexterity), but I can't use left
> handed scissors. I can only use right handed scisors
> and every time I tried to use left I would mess up.
> This is probably due to the fact that my mother is
> right handed nad when your 3 year old daughter tells
> you she needs to use the scissors, you just give her
> yours. So I learned to use the right handed ones. 

Sounds very familiar indeed.  My parents were born in Catholic 
southeastern Holland in 1926, and any southpaw was *forced* to become 
right-handed.  They had no trouble with me being a southpaw and left 
me to it, but it never entered their minds to get me left-handed 
scissors (or anything else left-handed for that matter) because they 
didn't even know such things existed.  Like Neth I can't use left-
handed scissors to this day.

The only time I really encountered problems with being a southpaw was 
in high school and some university classes, where the "desks" in the 
classrooms were chairs with tables barely big enough to hold an 
amoeba attached to one side...usually the right.  Lots of classes had 
no left-sided chairs at all, or they'd be in some far-flung corner.  
This meant I was forced to sit with my back twisted for the entire 
class and had no support for my writing hand.  Little wonder I had 
trapped nerve trouble for several years.  And the teachers wondered 
why I was such a Bolshie...it was enough to make *anyone* rebel!

I *love* the poetry I've been reading through on these boards :)  If 
there's one thing that made my heart sink in English classes, it was 
being told to write a poem.  Couldn't do it if my life depended on 
it.  Come to think of it, I should have blamed the right-handed 
chairs... 

Mary Ann :)
(who hated the trapped nerves but kinda liked the codiene 
prescription...)