HAPPINESS - DAY 5

12 August 2022

In looking over some of the other happiness entries by other people, I see that some have listed smells that make them happy.  I've been thinking of smells that make me happy.

First is coffee.  I love it when I am struggling to wake up and smell coffee, which means that Ned has come downstairs and started a pot of coffee, so I can pour myself a cup while I'm still sleepy and don't have to think about making it.  We drink Peet's French Roast coffee, which tastes unique and different from the coffee that most people drink.

When I was growing up in San Francisco, we lived in a flat that was located halfway between the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory (when they still made chocolate there, which they no longer do) and  the Folgers Coffee Plant, so I frequently went to school smelling mocha!

Other smells that always make me feel happy are -- the smell of a newborn baby's head, puppy breath, baking bread, the ocean, the air after a good rain, rubbing alcohol, and red roses with a real rose scent, not what you get in a greenhouse.

Tomorrow is Left Handers day.  I am the only one in my immediate family who is left handed.  I also have five children, none of whom is left handed.  My friend Char, who is right handed, also has five children, one of whom is left handed. 

How do we predict who is left handed? Statistics tell us that only 12% of the population is left handed, though since not everyone is totally left handed and may do some things with their right hand (I'm not one of them -- I am completely left-sided) it's hard to get a correct statistic.

I was very fortunate that when I went into the first grade and my teacher (a nun) asked if I wrote with my left or right hand, and I told her the left, she didn't try to change me.

In 1937, an educational psychologist whose work was later discredited wrote of many left-handers that “they squint, they stammer, they shuffle and shamble, they flounder like seals out of water.” Beyond accusations of being gauche, left-handers have also had to deal with more sinister imputations. In fact, the Latin for “left” is sinister, and the left hand has historically been associated with witchcraft and devil worship. While the charges of being clumsy can often be attributed to left-handers having to put up with tools designed for right-handers, the connection to demonic powers is simply supernatural nonsense, though it is easy to imagine why left-handers—a small minority that gained invisibility as the world became more industrialized—were demonized for being different.
- McGill

I've never really found being left handed a big problem, except in school.  We had to learn the Palmer method of handwriting.

All letters slant to the right and you had to write with your arm flat on the desk.  If you were left handed, you smeared everything and never got it right.  I never got good grades in handwriting, but there was never any instruction for left handed writing.  Many left handers write with the letters slanting to the left.  I can do that, but I am more comfortable writing with the letters slanting to the right.

Walt watches me cut things and can't believe I can use regular scissors to cut.  In truth, I bought left handed scissors once in a left handers store and I had been cutting with regular scissors, using my left hand, for so long that it was difficult for me to use the left handed scissors.

But today is My Day.  Congratulations to all the rest of you Lefties out there!