Scissors vs. Me
I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with scissors. As a lefty, it’s been a struggle. Starting back in my grammar school days, when no one was supposed to be left-handed, and going forward until now, I’ve never been able to cut straight. And trying to cut something round is even worse.
My mother tried, God rest her soul. As a righty, she taught me to hold a spoon, tie my shoes, and even knit, all backwards. She tried using a mirror, tried doing it left-handed herself, or just giving up and teaching me the activity right-handed. She had three other kids and a full-time job, so helping me often ended in, “Let’s try again later” (or, more often, “I give up.”)
She did buy my only pair of left-handed scissors when I was in my twenties. I still have them. Using them is so foreign to me, I pick them up with my right hand and place them in my left hand as if my left hand is a complete idiot and not what I write with every day. The truth is, I cut poorly, no matter which hand holds the scissors.
So, as part of being left-handed, I’m also clumsier. “A study of more than 550 children in the journal Pediatrics found that the left-handed youngsters were about twice as likely as right-handers to have been injured badly and need hospital treatment.” This is so believable. However, if zippers, buttons, doorways, and lifesavers—yes, they open backwards—were made to favor your non-dominant hand, you’d struggle, too.
As part of being a klutz, I dropped a glass in the dishwater. When I picked it up, the shattered edge sliced open my right thumb. I fortunately could use my left hand to apply the much-needed Band-Aid. Hours later, a dilemma of another sort developed.
The aforementioned bandage began to unravel. Nothing serious. Not worth rebandaging. I just need to cut off the thread hanging from it. With scissors. Of course, I couldn’t hold the scissors with my right hand because, well, that hand had the Band-aid that needed trimming. I ran to find my left-handed scissors. (Thanks, Mom!)
On the way, I thought, “how the heck do the scissors know which hand I’m using?” Lord knows I’ve picked up my precious left-handed scissors with my right hand by mistake and had the predictable results. Whatever I attempted to cut, wouldn’t cut. It just bent.
So, I picked up a more available pair of right-handed scissors—or “scissors” as most people call them. Just like people in China call Chinese food “food” and in Germany, German chocolate cake is just chocolate cake. (Or as my friend of German descent told me, there is no German chocolate cake in Germany.) The French call French fries “pommes frites,” but that’s a blog for another day.
Anyway, scissors in hand, I held them upside down and backwards, managing to clip off the offending thread from my Band-Aid. So, it was obvious the scissors were just a dumb instrument with no clue with hand I was using. My triumph of the day? I outwitted a pair of scissors.
I’m probably lucky I didn’t stab myself. God, I hate scissors.
Leave a Reply
