Extol the virtues of left-handedness!

A young man who graduated from my prep school – 29 years later, I suppose – has been charged with first degree murder in the death of a female classmate at the University of Virginia. I’ve never met him, although I suspect he is the nephew or some other relative of a woman I used to know slightly. It would not surprise me if he is guilty, although any finding is far into the future. It seems strange that he would be charged so soon. There was an announcement that the cause of death had not been determined: I always thought that sort of thing came before any charges were brought. It appears that the publicity is making the headmaster, athletic director and lacrosse coach uncomfortable. They’ve preemptively announced that they will have nothing to announce on the subject. The boy was apparently a football and lacrosse star.

This is probably accurate, but it’s hard to separate the straight-out clumsy accidents from those stemming from right handed tools and right handed people’s expectations.

I had a bad accident yesterday afternoon which was probably no more than bad luck. After shoveling much of Monday, I had things looking good – but I stepped into some re-frozen slush Tuesday and slipped – getting a nasty gash at the side of my left eye and tearing some ligaments in my left thigh. My right side is pretty good, but my left has put me into a wheelchair for several days. It hurts quite a bit!

My favorite uncle was left-handed; My favorite (there were only three of them, and I didn’t know the oldest) second cousin is left-handed: Let us not hear any nonsense about left-handedness not being the sign of genetic superiority.

We left-handed people have higher than average rates of genius, schizophrenia and accidental death, and some studies suggest we recover from right brain injury faster than right-handed people do from left brain injury – presumably because of greater generalization of function within the cerebrum.