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Hand | Dec 07 2002

Despite being ambidextrous, there are few things I do equally well with either hand. Basically, whichever hand I used the first time I tried something is the hand I use thereafter. Why develop or maintain redundant skill sets?

For those keeping score at home, there’s no logic or pattern to which hand I use for what. Thus I eat, write, golf, and play tennis right-handed, but throw, bowl, shoot pool, and play basketball left-handed. I’m a switch-hitter in baseball, having spent a humiliating summer at eleven learning to bat the other way around, which in this case was left-handed.

With no small amount of pride, I place myself in a different category of ambidextrous from those natural southpaws who are forced to write right-handed. Instead, I am “purely” ambidextrous, born with no dominant hand, naturally adept with both sides of my body and thus both sides of my brain.

Ultimately this is where my self-flattery points: to my brain. I tell myself that my dual-handedness reflects a special “dual-brainedness,” which in turn explains my odd mix of talents: left-brain logic and analysis combined with right-brain intuition and creativity.

We all need something to lean on.

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Only once have I tried to “exploit” my ambidextrousness, as it were. This happened at a summer league tennis tournament when I was 15. My team was in the city semifinals and I played 16-and-under singles. Thinking myself clever, I warmed up left-handed so as to fool my opponent into believing me a worse player than I was. My plan was to continue the ruse right up to the first point, when I would switch hands and rip a shot right past the poor chump.

Only it didn’t happen this way. Having neglected to warm up properly, I sent the first ball flying far beyond the baseline. By the time I found my range, I was hopelessly behind. I lost, the team lost, and my coach was pissed.

“Smart move, Lefty,” he barked as I walked off the court.

It wasn’t easy, but I managed to stop myself from informing him that I’m neither left-handed nor right-handed but ambidextrous.