It was just another Thursday evening in the school news room. My role for the day was being the Assistant Director for the 4:00 pm news broadcast (which is not a difficult task, unless you struggle with counting down numbers or don’t know how to use a stop watch. Luckily, I managed to dodge both those bullets.)
But lo and behold (here comes the drama), another bullet decided to bite me in the arse…or should I say hand. While I knew how to work a stop watch, this one did not know how I worked. No, really. It was clearly made for the mass-produced, everyday person – with the “start and stop” button made to be pushed by the thumb of a right hand.
So while I struggled to use the index finger of my left hand to work that ticking time-teller and simultaneously (and gracefully) maneuvered to use a pen to note down time stamps, I cursed the gods of the assembly-line.
I mean, it’s not like there are only two people in the universe that are left-handed. If that were the case, I’d understand. It wouldn’t make sense, you know, in terms of manufacturing costs, infrastructure investment, gross margins, profit maximization…that sorta thing (did I mention I am into financial journalism? That, and Britney Spears pre-shaved-head-days, popcorn, 90s music, hip-hop, factoids, and all things Michael Bublé…so references may be thrown in at random. You have been warned.)
Anyway, I digress. The world’s population is 7,211,557,705 (and counting. According to worldometers.info. Pretty cool site, btw, with tons of random information like “3,183,656 blog posts have been written today!)
ANYWAY, left-handers consist of 25.27% of the world’s population. That equals, uh, 25.27% of 7,211,557,705 (my calculator could only consume 9-digit numbers, unfortunately. So you would need to do the math yourself. In case you were wondering, I suck at mental math. Or any math for that matter. Ironic, isn’t it. Dammit, Sandra. FOCUS.) My point is, there are enough left-handed people in the world today for there to be adequate demand for such products.
Additionally, if you take into account the accomplishments, brain-size, genius cells and creativity nodes in these 25.27% individuals, it surpasses the remaining 74.73% by lightyears (I think I just wandered into the turf of Astrophysics…run away Sandra, run far far away.)
What I’m trying to say is that it would make life a helluva lot easier for a quarter of the world if a few simple things were widely available to left-handers. I’ve listed some items below:
- Can openers.
- Ball point pens
- Scissors (I was gifted one of these. Yay!)
- Spiral note books (those darn things)
- Desks in class rooms (you know, the ones attached to your seat made specifically for right-handed kids.)
- Stop watches
- Books, in general
- The English script.
The list goes on, but more in the next post.
Oh, and I made up the “25.27%” number. A random number with a decimal point always sounds more legit. But you get my point.
Stay crunchy,
-S
PS. The actual number of lefties in the world comprise of about 10-13%.
Note: This post was first published on 06/02/2014 23:09 and was imported after switching blog sites.
Being left-handed in a right-handed world 