From the Left Side
By Nan Reinhardt
No, I’m not talking politics, I’m talking literally from the left side. That’s how I see life because I’m a lefty. And not just left-handed, but extremely left-handed. Don’t ask me to do much of anything with my right—it simply ain’t gonna happen. It’s not always easy being a lefty in a right-handed world.
I grew up during the time when old-fashioned school teachers thought that being a lefty was a bad thing. My first grade teacher thought it was just plain wrong, so she made me sit on my left hand and write with my right as I learned to form the alphabet. I did it. I was six and compliant to the point of passivity. What did I know? I had a problem and gracious Mrs. Carr was going to fix it for me. She’d stand behind me as I struggled with the fat pencil clutched in my right hand, creating awkward, ugly letters. “Don’t you switch,” she’d warn with a sharp tap on my shoulder, almost as if she sensed when I was about to give it up and go back to left-handed writing.
But writing with my right hand still felt wrong, even though I knew being a lefty was what was really wrong. So I practiced at home, sitting on my left hand, putting pencil to paper, and scrawling my letters. One evening, Mom passed by the table where I was working and stopped to stare at me. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Making my letters.”
“Why are you using your right hand?” She stooped over to gently remove the pencil from my tight grasp.
“Because the left one is wrong,” I replied. “I hafta learn to write with my right hand ′cause that’s how I’m ′posed to do it.”
“Who told you that?” Now she was sitting next to me, drumming the pink eraser end of the fat yellow pencil on the table in front of her.
“Mrs. Carr.”
“She makes you sit with your left hand under your leg in class?” Mom’s cheeks were reddening—a sure sign she was irritated.
“Yes.” Fear began to well up in me. I didn’t want Mom mad at me too, so I said with six-year-old reasonableness. “It’s okay. I’m getting better at it.”
Mom just rolled her eyes, pulled my left hand from under my leg, and put the pencil between my fingers. “Do your letters with your left hand, honey. I’ll talk to Mrs. Carr.”
Later that night I heard her ranting on the phone to my grandfather about how incredibly stupid my teacher was. Poor Mrs. Carr was in for it now. You sure didn’t want my mom ticked off at you. She was the master of the withering stare and cutting word. The next morning she drove me to school. I sat in the front seat next to her feeling very small and worrying that Mrs. Carr was going to lose her job because I couldn’t write with my right hand. I asked Mom if she was going to get my teacher fired.
“No,” she replied, giving me a grin. “I’m going to ask her to let you be yourself, my freckled little lefty. No one has the right to change something essential to you. God created you a lefty and that’s the way you’re supposed to be. So don’t try writing with your right hand anymore, do it with your left—it’s how you’ll do it best.”
I didn’t hear what was said to my teacher that morning. Mom pulled her out into the hallway, and Mrs. Carr shut the classroom door. But when it came time to do our penmanship lesson later that day, Mrs. Carr strolled over to my desk, took my pencil from my right hand, and placed into my left. “Do it this way from now on.” she said, and moved on. Nothing more was ever said about it.
The following Sunday, we had our usual after-church lunch at my grandparents. In the kitchen, I stood on a footstool next to the stove to watch my grandfather cook. He offered me the spoon to stir the gravy. I accepted it with my left hand and as I began to stir the rich, thick sauce, he said, “You know, girlie, being a lefty is a special thing. Any fool can write or do things with their right hand, but it takes someone extraordinary to be able to do things with their left.” He winked and smiled. I tried on the word, whispering it to myself—extraordinary. It felt good. I was extraordinary and Mrs. Carr was wrong. Being a lefty made me very special.
Do I think being left-handed has affected me as a writer? That’s an excellent question. I think I do see the world a little bit differently than other people, not better or worse, just different in ways that make me … more prone to dream, maybe? I am always writing in my head—creating settings, rehearsing dialogue, having conversations with characters as they grow and develop. I’m not sure if that all has anything to do with being a lefty…probably not. But it’s interesting to think about it, isn’t it? How your handedness affects how you view the world.
So, how many of you are lefties or are close to someone who is? Talk to me about how you, or they, see the world differently.
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Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today bestselling author of sweet, small-town romantic fiction for Tule Publishing. Her day job is working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, however, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten and is still writing, but now from the viewpoint of a wiser, slightly rumpled, woman in her prime. Nan lives in the Midwest with her husband of 51 years, where they split their time between a house in the city and a cottage on a lake. Talk to Nan at: nan@nanreinhardt.com.
Made for Mistletoe, book 3 in the Walkers of River’s Edge series
This Christmas he has big plans until he meets a beautiful distraction….
Army reservist Cameron Walker loves everything about the holidays in River’s Edge—celebrating with his big family and carving out more time to work on his custom design furniture in his studio. But when he meets a visiting artist and niece of a family friend, he’s eager to break his work plans for play. He knows first-hand life’s short.
Teacher and artist Harper Gaines is bowled over by the handsome and friendly finish carpenter she meets during her vacation. His admiration for her art and his enthusiasm for life light her up, and remind her of how much she’s been missing since her soldier husband’s death. But when she discovers Cam’s also a soldier, she retreats, unable to risk another loss.
Cam has never felt such a strong connection, and he won’t give up without a fight. But will Cam’s persistence and the magic of Christmas be enough to convince Harper to take a chance on them?
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Excerpt
#1—Harper meets Cam’s cat for the first time:
“Hullo, kitty.” She obliged, picking him up and rubbing her cheek on his fur. “Mee? Seriously? That’s its name?”
Cam shook his head to clear it, but he should’ve cleared his throat because the words, “No, his—” came out in a croak. He did clear his throat then. “His name is Chairman Meow, but I call him Mee for short.”
“Chairman Meow. Clever.” She held the cat out to look into his unblinking green eyes. “Hello, Chairman Meow. How did you get that name?”
Inanely, Cam waited a few seconds, not really thinking the cat would answer, but having Harper show up at his door was a miracle, and he was certainly up for more. Finally, after she transferred her gaze to him, he said, “Joe and I found him on the River Walk a couple of winters ago—wet and shivering under one of the benches. I brought him home, dried him off, and gave him some scrambled eggs. Put an ad on the local lost-pet Facebook page, but nobody claimed him.”
“And Chairman Meow?” She wandered farther into the workshop with a limp Mee lying on her shoulder like a furry scarf.
“Ah, that was all my brother Joe. When Mee was a kitten, his head was so round and seemed way too big for his body. Have you seen pictures of Mao Tse-tung?”
She frowned. “If I have, I don’t remember.”
“Round face. Plump cheeks, plus that cat took over my house like a little general.” He chuckled. “Couple of days after I got him, we were drinking hot buttered rum and tossing out names for the poor thing who was glaring at us like we were the enemy, and Joe mentioned he looked like Mao … so Chairman Meow.”
“Ah, okay.” She gave the cat a final stroke and set him back on the concrete floor. “I like it.”
Category: On Writing
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