Friday, December 15, 2006
While eating at my favorite secret Joya replacement, my girlfriend noticed for the first time that I was left-handed. I replied, “Yeah, that means I don’t have to do the ridiculous knife swap like you right-handed people.” Which incited the argument.
Like the peeflap on briefs or driving on the left side of the street, the right-handed knife shuffle is one of those things that you never really think about when you’re outside the affected demographic. I never really knew that right-handed people had such a hard time using a knife until much later in life, when I suddenly realized someone was taking a ridiculously long time eating a steak. In fact, it took a lot of ’splaining to get me to understand what was going on.
When you’re left-handed, cutting something on your plate involves three simple steps:
I think this is perfectly normal until one day when I realize that right-handed people don’t have it so easy. They have their fork in their right hand, which is the same the knife is lying on. There are variations, but the shuffle seems to be something like:
When I pointed this out to the girlfriend, her response was that her left hand was exceptionally weak, which is why she did the shuffle. She also claimed that left-handed people “live in a right-handed world” and have to be a little ambidextrous, which is why we can cut with our right hand.
Personally, I think if it was a “right-handed world”, they would have put the fork on the right side. But that’s just me.
So now we need to conduct a study on whether or not the right-handed knife shuffle really exists, and what its cause is. Let’s see if DARPA will fund this.
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