Bravo Fidel ... a leftie who demands Cubans’ rights
Today is the 11th World Left-Handers' Day when lefties demand their rights.
"Correction" at school redirected Tánaiste Mary Harney from an early leftist tendency, yet she managed to revert to the citeóg after accidentally breaking her right arm some years back.
Any assessment of left-handers would include such noble qualities as resourcefulness and adaptability.
Creativity and genius, too, are associated with the right-side of the brain that drives the left side of the body.
Researchers usually classify left-handers as meeting the following criteria:
Do you use the left hand to write?
Is the left hand preferred for the majority of key tasks?
Is the left the most skilful, proficient or most able hand?
Convention can be a cruel master towards minorities, such as left-inclined mortals, when "might is right" and vice versa. Ever try using the conventional scissors if you're left-handed? Or doing some other tasks when the tools don't suit the hand? If so, check out the left-handers' website for liberation.
The rightists even get their way in the dictionary, labelling people of the left as "evil or villainous in appearance or manner," having fashioned the word "left" from the Latin (sinister).
Maybe, they've got a point. Left-handed criminal sorts include William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, and Jack the Ripper, who darkly wielded the knife in sinister fashion.
Of course, history records a glorious trail of left-handers who changed the face of history. Pure geniuses. Among them are Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Rubens; tennis aces Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova; soccer legends Pele and Johann Cruyff; golfing greats Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer.
Not to mention Beethoven, Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain. Napoleon (and Josephine), Nelson, Churchill, Gandhi not forgetting Julius Caesar went with the left. Bill Clinton and another former US president, George Bush, are notable lefties, too.
One enduring figure stands tall on this special day. Let's hear it, comrades, for birthday boy Fidel Castro who's 77. Now there's a man of the left.
