Sunday Rerun: ...On the other hand...

 You know the old saying, currently popular in D.C: "the shoe's on the other foot now."  That would really be uncomfortable.  But how about if the pencil's in the other hand?

In my neverending search to find new interesting material to share, my web surfboard washed up on a site called http://hubpages.com/education/Creativity-and-the-Non-dominant-Hand

and this is some fascinating stuff right here.  


This article makes the point, or tries to, that if you are stuck in a mental logjam, or a bucket of strawberry jam, you can get your brain back in gear by...using your other (non-dominant) hand.

Read the article with either hand on the mouse, and see if you think it would work.  

Yessirree Bob! 

Have you ever, for instance, sprained your wrist reaching for a lunch check (laughter) and found yourself unable to use your right hand for mousing purposes for awhile?  I know someone who had shoulder surgery and is currently left-mousing it, and from all indications, it is not easy.  

The article says if you pick up your pen with your other hand and write with just that hand for a week or two, you will:

• soon be writing legibly with the new hand
• have all sorts of new thoughts to write about in your new handwriting
• find that hoodie that you thought you left at the pool but wasn't there when you checked the lost-and-found

And THEN, the article says, if you normally write with your right hand, use that hand to write a question, and write the answer with your newly-trained left hand.

They say it works! To quote from the story: 

 It is allowing that part of your mind, which normally 'switch-boards' through the right-hand side of your brain, access to consciousness via writing. The predominantly 'creative' right hemisphere of the brain, which channels most of our imaginative processes, our sense of rhythm, spatial awareness, our daydreaming, colour and sense of dimension, our 'picturing' and visualization, is thereby made available. The flow is through the right-brain and down through that left hand.

I will leave it to the clinical psychologists among us - and you know who you are - to determine if this is valid.

My plan, since I'm left handed, would be to take that hand and write "What the heck is this consarned reverse-hand foolishness?" and then see what the right hand writes.

It's funny how we always put on the same shoe first, or use the same hand to brush our teeth.  

It works better if you use a toothbrush, you know.