Not that it’s conclusive at his age, but Jasper appears to be left-handed. Probably got it from the Lady’s side of the family, ‘cos two of her brothers are left-handed, yet noone from my family is.
It means that he’ll need left-hand scissors. If he ever plays bowling he’ll need left-handed bowling balls. If he does fencing he’s going to get an unfair advantage. He won’t be using one of these (which is fine, he can always use a Kensington instead), and he will have to adapt to using the finest writing instrument. The numeric keypad on standard 101 or 104 keyboards won’t be very useful to him but that’s fine, we’ll put him on a laptop and give him a USB numeric keypad if he needs one. If he wants to play some musical instruments he will have to overcome some problems.
The Lady has a big family on her side, so Jasper will have problems with “chopstick-fighting” when he gets old enough to join the big family events at round tables.
4 responses so far ↓
1 James Mok // Jan 30, 2004 at 8:40 am
Alec is also left-handed.
The right hand side numeric keyboard does not seem to create any problem form him, but he refused to write or eat with his right hand ever since he could pick up a pen, pair of chopsticks, a fork, or a spoon. The biggest problem for him is Chinese calligraphy. A left-handed pushing stroke just doesn’t look anything like a right-handed pulling one.
2 James Mok // Jan 30, 2004 at 8:48 am
Actually, our biggest problem is from our elderly relatives who kept nagging us about Alec’s left-handed writing. The older generations seems to have a thing about that. I think forcing him to write with his uncomfortable hand may slow his mind down from any type of learning through writing.
3 tin_the_fatty // Jan 30, 2004 at 4:42 pm
You are right, don’t do it!
The Broca’s Area in the Human brain controls speech as well as hand/finger movements. Some believe that trying to correct “handedness” would result in stuttering.
As for Chinese calligraphy, teach him to do it with his hand hanging in the air, then it’s pulling in all different directions. Harder to begin with, but that’s how everyone did it in the old times, and probably better for him in the long run. Good for impressing the literate kind of chicks.
Now it would be even more impressive if he could do mirror script like Leonardo da Vinci.
4 James // Jan 30, 2004 at 11:46 pm
A right-handed Canadian friend of mine was able to write mirror scripts. Not sure if it was his good looks or his mirror scripts that caught chicks’ attention but hanging out with him did give me some advantages to attract those who didn’t see much in him over me. Ha! ;-p