Smile-breaks
Lefties headed for extinction?
You won't believe the stuff they say. I was reading this article about lefties, because that's what I am and I haf'ta tell you, they sure come to a lot of crazy conclusions about both right and left-handers. I was born left-handed and stayed that way. I know some of you were born left-handed and are now right-handed and some of you were always right. Handed, I mean.
Wait a minute, let me see who "they" are – you know, check their credentials and all. See if they have degrees in left handedness from Yale or Harvard or if they just read a few books and asked a few questions.
The article was in the scholarly Union-Tribune – the San Diego one you've all read a time or two. The article was written by a James Owen – recognize the name? Neither do I. The news source was the National Geographic News. Pretty impressive so far – the National Geographic News direct to the Union-Tribune.
So where did James Owen get all his information about lefties? I'll just throw it in as I go along. I barely started reading the thing when I discovered I'm headed for extinction – me and all you other lefties. According to Jim, we have "an array of evolutionary cards… stacked against" us. Disease, accidents, just to mention a few. Funny, I thought right-handers got those, too.
But not to fear – we lefties have something special. We have the element of surprise! Jim calls it the "slightly sinister secret" behind our survival. Seems we catch people off guard. You know, the "Oh, you're a lefty!" we hear all the time. But Jim has this straight from a team at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in France, so now it's official. If you never realized the importance of being a lefty, you gotta' be impressed by the name of the publication Jim is quoting from: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Beats me, but it sounds good. Hey! Why not A? Is that one reserved for righties?
I'll shorten this up for you, because the magnitude of what this Jim says in his article is beyond belief. On the doomsday side: southpaws have higher rates of accidents, more chance of being schizophrenic, and male lefties are less likely to reproduce because they're shorter and beautiful women don't go for the shorter guy so the shorter left-handed guy never gets married and thus never reproduces. Or at least, less often than tall right-handed men. Or so they say.
The question then is, according to Jim – how have we managed to escape extinction? 'Cause here we are. Now get this: it's because of – might be because of – the success of left-handed athletes in one-on-one sports. Of course! I should've known that! How come I didn't figure that out? Prob'ly because I wasn't expecting to become extinct.
Not only that, according to the co-author of the report, Charlotte Faurie, lefties also tend to win out in violent fights and homicides, because righties never expect the blow to come from the left. Or the bullet to zing in from that direction. So this explains why there are still million of us lefties on the planet and will continue to be for generations to come.
This is good news for all: lefties and righties. We lefties will use our sinister secret of surprise in all our future encounters and you righties will be ready because I just told you what to look out for.
And so we shall all survive, hand in hand, happily ever after.
