I never thought of myself as being in a minority until I read that left-handed people make up approximately only 10 percent of the world population; it's not a learned ability or disability, but is genetic. My uncle is left-handed; Dad claimed to be ambidextrous, but as far as I know, the rest of the kin are in the majority of the 90 percent of people who are right-handed.

"Southpaws" was a term that sprang out of sports, particularly baseball, in the 1880s. Conversely, "northpaws" are right-handed folks.

I grew up in the 1950s in Chicago, and was never subject to changing my handedness, but I've heard from other lefties that trying to convert everyone to right-handedness was a common practice, particularly in schools back then. Lucky me for not encountering that!

When I was in third grade, we learned to write cursive. That was the first time I noticed the challenge of being left-handed. Using the popular cartridge ink pen, my left hand would drag the wet ink across the page, making it messy and illegible. I was so embarrassed, not realizing that in a class of 25 pupils, statistically there had to have been at least 1.5 other lefties in the class.

Cutting was always difficult for grade-school me; it never crossed my mind that scissors in schools were designed for right-handers.

During high school, I picked up a guitar, turned it upside-down, which seemed comfortable, natural, and intuitive, and learned to play a few chords. Now, if I ever want to actually play a guitar, ukulele, mandolin or banjo, I'd have to hold it upside-down or maybe have it restrung. I've never picked up a violin or viola, so maybe I could make a fresh start playing a stringed instrument the way it was intended to be played. Or perhaps I should just make peace with learning some tunes on some other musical instrument that isn't dependent on handedness, such as the electric keyboard that my friend loaned me during COVID-19, so I'd have something useful to do.

My first job here in Champaign-Urbana was in 1972, working in a fast-food joint. Using the french-fry server to put fries from a large cooker into a tiny paper bag was a challenge and the first time I really discovered that certain tools are designed for right-handed folks and give us lefties a clear disadvantage. I struggled with this task and worried about getting fired. But who else but a 20-year-old college student would be willing to bicycle to work for the late-night shift in a questionable neighborhood for $1.60 an hour, serving fast food for the summer, so I remained employed until my fall classes resumed.

I'm not sure what prompted me to join a co-ed softball team in the mid-1990s, since I'm not particularly athletic. But early on in the team's formation, one of my caring teammates suggested I visit the popular resale sporting-goods shop Play It Again Sports, which is still in existence, but no longer in Champaign-Urbana. I found exactly what I wanted, a left-handed softball mitt, which served me well during my softball-playing days though did not transform me into any sort of sportswoman.

In 2011, I participated in a theme group tour to Salt Lake City to explore our family's genealogy. It was amazing how much information there is there. Many of the documents are on microfilm, and I was impressed that there were actually left-handed microfilm machines. Frankly, I wouldn't have noticed the difference!

I learned to crochet in college, and I love that my now-9-year-old granddaughter wants me to teach her to crochet. Each time I visit her in Southern California, I bring different colors of yarn and some crochet hooks, but this left-handed grandma has not been successful teaching her to crochet despite numerous attempts.

It seems most anything you want these days exists online. The same holds true for specialty items for lefties, and there are several online stores that sell those things for the kitchen, school, music and much more. While checking out the virtual shops for southpaws, I noticed some left-handed spiral notebooks. But, hey, I'm way ahead of the game, because whenever I use a spiral notebook, I generally use the back of the page only, so the spiral is on the right, not on the left.

I feel privileged to be so very special, one the relatively few (10 percent) lefties in the world!