Friday, May 29, 2009

WHY LEFT-HANDERS DIE EARLY - Introduction

‘You’re a left hander??? Cool! Do you know you will die earlier than right handers?!”

I have lost track of how many times I’ve heard this statement. However, I’ve yet to determine which part of ‘dying early’ is cool. In the beginning, I wasn’t so sure of the fact that left handers die early. Logically, why would this be so? Unfortunately, when I did some background check, apparently a study by Coren S, Halpern DF which was published in 1991 claimed that these statistics indicate that left-handed people's lifespans are shorter than those of their right-handed counterparts by as much as 9 years.* Great, absolutely fantastic.

Which brings me to the question, why? If I was going to die early, I’m going to need to know the reason. Well, the author suggested that, ‘This may be the result of left-handed people being more likely to die in accidents as a result of their "affliction", which renders them clumsier and ill-equipped to survive in a right-handed world.’*

Or, in the words of Samantha Madison from the book All American Girl, ‘Left-handed people die sooner than right-handers, due to the fact that the entire world, from automobiles to those desks you take the SATs at to cash machines at the bank, is slanted toward the right-handed. Finally, after a while, we lefties just give up the struggle and croak rather than try one last time to write something in a spiral-bound notebook with all those wires poking into our wrists.’

Thus inspired, I decided to list down some of the grievances left-handers face. Some of them are personal discomforts; some have been contributed by other left-handers (and surprisingly, right-handers as well) while the rest of them were lifted off the net. Without further ado, let the left-handers cry of oppression begin.

P.S. To ease the eye and to appease my readers, I will divide this post into many sub posts AND I will put pictures.

*Source from Coren S, Halpern DF (1991). "Left-handedness: a marker for decreased survival fitness". Psychological Bulletin 109 (1): 90–106. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.109.1.90

To be continued…

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey I'm left-handed too!! And if you've checked lately, left handed people die no earlier that right handed people. And I've heard that a thousand times too!! And it gets sort of annoying when people claim I'm gonna die earlier. But hey, I'm proud to be a left hander! Don't let it get to you!! :)

ummi. said...

yayyy to tze! ;D fyi im a left-handed too. ;)

sarath said...

i m a leftie nd proud 2 be a left handed.. i dont believe that i would die earlier than right handerz.. i have got used to this right handed world..

hasan said...

well i'm a leftie too. but, indeed, because of most tools are designed for righties, we have a bigger chance to get an accident. some authors did claim so :
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/325042/LEFTIE-CHILDREN-MOST-ACCIDENT-PRONE.html

but don't be afraid, life and death is a probabilistic event which you may believe it is "god" business or just a "coincidence" events.