left hand-icapped

And now for something completely trivial...or not.

Fact of the day about me: I am very left handed. Or right-brained, however you want to look at it. About the only things I do right handed are bowling and archery, and since I haven't done either for a long time, I am pretty much 100% lefty. My political tendencies are maybe not 100% but they do lean that way. My brother and dad are also left handed, as is The Hermit, although not to the degree that I am. I thought it was a genetic thing, but so far all three of my offspring favor their right hands.

For the most part, it's not a problem in a world that is predominantly right handed. By the time I went to grade school, fortunately teachers had gotten past the urge to "correct" left handedness. It may take some minor mental adjustments when learning a task, but for the most part I can adapt. I learned how to play guitar the "normal" way, and I could never understand why Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, both lefties, set up their guitars the opposite way. After all, it takes two hands to play guitar, and both are equally important.

The other day, however, I was stymied by, of all things, a kitchen tool. A vegetable peeler, to be exact. My old vegetable peeler, which I had been using with my left hand for at least as long as I've been married (13 years), finally broke, so The Hermit bought a similar-looking one to replace it. On Sunday I was going to peel potatoes for a pot roast. Normally I wouldn't bother peeling them, I think they're more nutritious with the peelings on, but these homegrown potatoes had scab that wouldn't wash off. So I picked up the peeler in my left hand, potato in my right and...nothing happened. The peeler slid over the skin without digging in or slicing. I was feeling rather clumsy in the kitchen that day to begin with, so at first I thought it was just me. I tried it with a carrot. Same thing. Then I did something different; I tried drawing the peeler towards myself instead of away. A nice slice of potato skin came off. Then I tried holding the peeler in my right hand. It worked, but it didn't feel right. I was completely disoriented, and I ended up cutting the potatoes into chunks and cutting off the scabby parts with a knife.

How simple would it be to make a vegetable peeler with blades on both sides of the little groove in the middle? Obviously they did it years ago when my old peeler was made. I hope I can find one like my old one somewhere, because I'm a bit too set in my ways to relearn something as basic as peeling potatoes. :)