Left... unlucky

Friday, 13 August 2010 - Ah... Friday the 13th?  Good day for a horror film no?  What about a good day to run through the neighbourhood with a goalie mask?  Sickle?  Butchers knife?  Talking doll? (Sorry, wrong movie.) This is one of those days where anything you do or say is blame free.  Honestly?  Who could blame you? So where does the evil shroud of Friday the 13th come from, other than from some B Movie horror film with a guy named Freddie?

Fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia... and if you aren't afraid of the day, you should be afraid of having to pronounce that!  Seems to be that until the 19th century, there wasn't any real record of a Friday falling on the 13th being a bad luck day. But think about all the bad that is associated with the number 13?  There are 12 months in a year, 12 hours on a clock face, 12 apostles, 12 zodiac signs, 12 Olympus Gods...  Maybe 13 is unlucky cause it messes with the order of things.  And Fridays...  well, they say its a bad day to start a project, is a bad day for the markets (Black Friday ring any bells?), and it seems Friday wasn't a great day for Jesus. There are not too many 13th floors in towers and buildings (unless you are Chinese, in which case there isn't too many 4th or 14th floors).  Who knows what brought this about, all I know is that today is Blame Someone Else Day, and I have no intention of taking any blame for anything today. I will blame it on the day, on the numerology, on the evil spirits among us, the black cat next door, or that I walked under a ladder.  I WILL NOT take any actual blame myself... I will blame the curse of Friday the 13th.

Is being left handed a curse? I know that much of the world is built for right handedness, but being a right hander myself, I'm not sure how this really applies. Being careful where you seat people at the dinner table should be considered... and if you can put all the lefties on one side, and the rest of us on the other (hey - segregation has it's purpose), there will not be a battle of elbows. You could put all lefties in right hand drive cars and they can shift with their naturally dominant hand - or force them all to drive automatics. How do you build a left handed keyboard?  Would you move the backspace keys to the other side? Put the escape on the right (hey, learn to use your right and you too could escape). Fire extinguishers are build right handed. The pin is pulled with the right and the nozzle is controlled with the right.  Can a zipper be right or left handed?  Golf clubs are always available in Right, but need a Left set and you can wait awhile. Tennis rackets are right handed.  If you play with them on the left, the logo is backwards.  Maybe if you string them the opposite way?

Is it a coincidence that today is International Left Handed Day and a Friday the 13th?  Or, is left-handedness just as bad luck?  Actually, some of the most brilliant people I know are Lefties. Maybe because you are forced to think about even the smallest and most mindless moves you activate more synapses and get more brain action than you do as a right hander. It's possible that you have to activate larger areas in the brain for smaller tasks, and the flow of all those extra neurotransmitters is good for brain power. It's entirely possible. Perhaps the lefties just need to be smarter or they would be that much easier to mess with at parties. Just a right-handed thought.