My Father Lefty: A Short Story

Everyone calls my father Lefty for the obvious reason. My dad was born at home in 1941, on a farm 20 miles from the nearest tiny town in Indiana. A farm kid, he went to school in a four room school house where most of the kids were like him and went to school when they didn’t have to help out on the farm. When my father was in the second grade, he was already 9 years old. Dad’s teacher then was Mrs. Graves, who he remembers well. Back then everyone in second grade had to learn to write in cursive. Mrs. Graves’ second graders were no exception. As soon as school started that year, Mrs. Graves began teaching all the little hands how to gracefully join their letters. Because my dad was left-handed, mastering cursive writing was very hard
for him. He spent endless hours, writing upside down trying to copy Mrs. Graves perfect slants, loops, and curves. When kids younger than my dad were easily learning this new skill, he couldn’t even earn a “C” in penmanship. One day, when Mrs.
Graves told everyone else to get out their pencils and paper, she told my father to come up to her desk. When he did, she told him she was going to try something new and told Dad to unbuckle his belt. He said he thought he was really in for it, then. Instead, the teacher put Dad’s left hand down to his side and strapped it in place by buckling his belt again. At first, he did not understand, but Mrs. Graves told him that from then on he was going to learn to be right-handed. Walking back to his desk, my father was so embarrassed, but he didn’t dare cry. From that day on, he had to use his right hand to write because every day, Mrs. Graves buckled his left hand tight to his side. Struggling and humiliated, he did learn to write in cursive with his right hand, finally scrawling his name, though it was not easy for him. All the same, he still did everything else with his left hand, including eating and playing basketball. People like my dad are not really lefties. They are called ambidextrous because they can use both
hands. This story made me angry when my father told it to me, because it seemed like such a mean thing for his teacher to do.
My dad said that, back then, they just did not know any better. At least today they do know better. Teachers don’t make left-handed kids learn to write with their right hands anymore. Today, under federal access to education policy, 10 percent of the desks in each classroom must be left handed desks. More modern schools don't have desks at all but have open tables and chairs. Classrooms even have left handed pencil sharpeners or easily worked electric sharpeners. Today, a kid is free to be “Lefty” if he wants to be—after all, no one has ever heard of anyone nicknamed
Ambidextrous.