Leftie

A plump, generously-glazed donut occupied my dominant right hand this morning when I sat down at my desk. It didn't take long to realize I'd have to transfer the donut to my left hand and lick off a fair amount of residual sugar in order to operate my mouse. It seemed a lot easier to reach across with my left and work the mouse that way until the donut was gone.
That maneuver got old quickly, so on a whim, I pulled the mouse to the other side of my keyboard, remembering even in the act that my dad had made the artificial switch to left-moused-ness years ago. So many years ago that he may have switched back by now, I'm not sure. I didn't make too big a deal of this: I am coming to grips with the increasing similarities I see between myself and my father. It comes as no surprise that the monotony of the office would eventually lead me down the same paths. I am willing to bet that somewhere around 80% of all office workers have toyed with left-moused-ness at some point in there inauspicious careers.
One of my first left-handed actions was to open up the Control Panel and invert the buttons on the mouse so my pointer finger was still performing primary functions while my middle finger would be in charge of secondary functions, or "right-clicking" with the left button. This of course sets off the buzzer, "Wait, why is it called right-clicking if at least 10% of the population may be using the mouse with their left hands? that's going to mess me up all day..."
It does mess me up all day.
It takes a couple of hours before I am back in the control panel looking for a way to flip the cursor so that it is pointing to the right instead of to the left, which is a bit disorienting to me. Since the mouse is on the left of the screen, it feels like the pointer should be coming from that side. I look through all the menus in the mouse control box and can't find such an option.
One of my coworkers passes by my desk.
"Hey Robert, you're left-handed aren't you?"
"Yes, I am."
"I thought so. Do you use your mouse with your right hand or your left?"
"I use it right-handed. I mean, when I first encountered computers, the mouse was always on the right side of the keyboard. It wasn't like a motor skill that I'd developed up to that point, so I don't think it was any different than learning to use a mouse with my left hand would have been."
"Huh, I never thought of that."
"Yeah, I was actually just barely listening to a podcast about left-handedness. You must have felt some left-hand vibes coming across the wall. I don't really think there are very many scenarios where it really matters which hand you use, you know?"
He's probably right.
My left hand my be a bit more dexterous than the left hands of my other right-handed peers, owing to my long years of piano lessons, saxophone lessons, and even experimentation with the guitar, all of which require a fair amount of fine motor control in both hands. I remember that Jimi Hendrix - or was it Carlos Santana? Or both? - learned to play the guitar backwards because he was left-handed.
Around lunch time, I realize my left forearm is a little sore. I never would have considered pushing a mouse around for hours a day to be strenuous, but I'm feeling some admittedly minor effects even in my upper arm. "Maybe this will help ease that knot in my shoulder," I think to myself. Of course it will - changing hands changes my entire posture. My left arm is not accustomed to resting on the desk the way my right arm is.
Eight hours go by and I don't notice a dramatic increase in my left-mousing skills. My speed is still probably around half as quick, and I feel like I pick the mouse up way more than I did with my right hand. I can't figure out which finger I'm supposed to use on the scrolling wheel in the middle of the mouse My right hand is not a team player on the keyboard, making all those little contributory keystrokes that are all but unconscious with my left hand (hey, ctrl+z, ctrl+x, ctrl+c, ctrl+v -- they are all in the lower left corner of the keyboard, much easier to pull off with the left hand). If the mouse is the steering wheel of this operation, than the keyboard makes up the gear shift, the pedals, turn signals, wiper blades, headlights, and all those other functions of driving that don't get as much credit as they're due.
Miniscule observations like these don't mean much on their own, but taken together, they are just another example of the steamrolling of a group of people because of the ignorance or inconsideration of the majority. With handedness, the differences amount to trivial inconveniences and irritations. With other factors that contribute to diversity and differentiate one person from another - sightedness, religion, culture, upbringing - those differences still exist, and try as I might, I will never fully appreciate what another individual experiences.