Yes, This Was a Thing

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My mother said the nuns in Catholic school forced her to write with her right hand. Late 1930's. And students were graded for penmanship, and my mother would always receive a C-.
my father also was made to use his right hand in school by the nuns - he retired from teaching 3 years ago, still does everything other than write with his left hand...throw, bat, shoot baskets, hammer, cut with a knife, saw...it is crazy to me that this was ever an issue!
 
I stared at similar writings on the wall every school day from K-6th grade and after looking at the link, I have no earthly idea what 'method' we were taught. :confused3 I started school in 1981.

Based on the capital F's and T's in that link, I was taught the Palmer style.

95%+ of my handwriting is done in cursive, but for some reason I stopped using cursive capital letters back in college. Block letter capitals at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns, then lower case cursive.
 
Based on the capital F's and T's in that link, I was taught the Palmer style.

95%+ of my handwriting is done in cursive, but for some reason I stopped using cursive capital letters back in college. Block letter capitals at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns, then lower case cursive.
Same here. I switched to taking notes in regular text all caps in college as I couldn't read my own cursive writing when I sped it up to keep up with the lectures. My signature is a mix of capital text and cursive scrawl.
 
I had a penmanship teacher in elementary school in the 60's who did not like left handed students. She would grab my paper and pen all the time trying to change the position I had it in for writing. My cursive is actually very good most days but she never liked it. I never got certificates like the right handed kids got. Oh well, when I had kids I gave the world 2 more left handed people. Yay!
 


FWIW, for everyday household scissors, IKEA is your best friend if you have both righties and lefties in the house. Their scissors are crazy cheap (3 for $3), durable, and designed to be used with either hand.
trojka-scissors-set-of-3-multicolour__0711776_PE728425_S5.JPG

We have bunches of them. (Because DH is left-handed, and because I sew in a serious way. Everyone who sews knows how important it is to seed your house with decent paper scissors in order to keep grubby hands off your dressmaking shears.)
 
My paternal grandfather was a leftie and a street kid. He would play marbles righty then up the stakes by taking the “disadvantage” of using his left hand and clean up.
He also had beautiful handwriting. I started copying his capital letters from the few things my grandma had around and also the “swoop” at the end of his signature. I still do that though it’s not as pretty as it was when I was a young teen and my notes had to be “perfect.” 😂

My mother’s youngest brother is also a leftie but is ambidextrous because he was forced to use his right hand. He’s about ten years older than me so that would have been early 60s in school.

I’m a leftie and writing the alphabet backwards, letters and all on the garage wall is legend in my family. My kindergarten teacher (70s) tried to force me to use my right hand and my dad told her in very colorful terms to leave me alone. I do a lot of things “backwards” (including crochet) but had to learn to use things like scissors in my right hand. Still do. My biggest struggle is a can opener, I just can’t make my brain do it the right way the first time.

My younger DD is also a leftie and a redhead. She’s double “evil.” She throws a ball or frisbee with her right though.

My daughter is a leftie. No one in our family deterred her from being one. Sad it ever was considered "wrong."

The only issue we had was teaching how to tie shoes. :confused3 I don't know why it kept getting lost in translation, but it did. Even when we faced each other. I found a YouTube video on left handed shoe tying and after she watched it a dozen+ times it clicked! :D
I had to have my DH teach my oldest DD and my DS how to tie their shoes because as a leftie I couldn’t figure out how to show them.
 
When I was young and it became obvious that I was a lefty my mother said her grandparents were horrified and told her she needed to smack me whenever I used my left hand. This was in 1974, so obviously old fears took a long time to die out.
 


My parents both attended Catholic school in the 50s/60s. My mom has a cousin who is VERY left-handed, does everything lefty, but writes with his right hand because of Catholic school. He will even pick up the pen with his left hand and put it in his right hand.
 
FWIW, for everyday household scissors, IKEA is your best friend if you have both righties and lefties in the house. Their scissors are crazy cheap (3 for $3), durable, and designed to be used with either hand.
trojka-scissors-set-of-3-multicolour__0711776_PE728425_S5.JPG

We have bunches of them. (Because DH is left-handed, and because I sew in a serious way. Everyone who sews knows how important it is to seed your house with decent paper scissors in order to keep grubby hands off your dressmaking shears.)
HullOoooo!
I normally get a pack of cheapo scissors from Michael's or Target's for the other house occupants (and the kitchen) but my sewing and craft scissors "hide in plain sight" where they'd never look for them, LOL. Wish I could do the same with my cooking knives.
Will keep my eyes open next time we go to IKEA:cool:
 
My mother had good dressmaking shears that I wasn't allowed to use. I still have them; they're at least 60 years old, but they're in the kitchen junk drawer for everyday use.

My mother REALLY freaked out when I used her pinking shears (zigzag pattern) to cut construction paper to make a fancy "frame" for a Bobby Sherman magazine photo.
 
S: Most Catholic schools used Palmer Method in the early part of the 20th century, but switched to Zaner-Bloser in the 1950s, while a method called D'Nealian was most popular in US public schools during the postwar era. This nifty chart shows a whole lot of different styles: https://www.christianbook.com/page/homeschool/handwriting/handwriting-comparison-chart.
'm right-handed but I use the computer mouse with my left hand, so my right hand is free to write while I mouse. (And, in line with what NotUrsula said, I learned D'Nealean writing. Catholic School, late 70s/early 80s.)

This is all interesting to me as my kids were taught D’Nealian print when they started preschool in 2007 & 2008. Then they learned the cursive version in 2nd or 3rd grade. I had never heard of it until they started using it.
 
My mother had good dressmaking shears that I wasn't allowed to use. I still have them; they're at least 60 years old, but they're in the kitchen junk drawer for everyday use.

My mother REALLY freaked out when I used her pinking shears (zigzag pattern) to cut construction paper to make a fancy "frame" for a Bobby Sherman magazine photo.

I used my mom's pinking shears to cut up one of her dresses. :scared1: :rotfl2:
 
Friend was a state trooper in Massachusetts, started in the late 1960's and had to wear his revolver on the right hip and learn to shoot with the right hand. Sometime in the 70's he was allowed to switch to the left side.
 
My brother is a lefty and started public school in 1962. Years later, my mother said that when she went to enroll him, she mentioned that he's left-handed and asked if she should encourage him to switch. The principal said, "Oh, no, we don't do that anymore."
 
My mom was right handed, but sat next to a left-handed girl in school (public - they didn't try to change her) who actually had very pretty handwriting...which my practiced hard to imitate. So her writing looked left-handed, even though she used her right. :rotfl2:

My brother writes and eats left-handed, but plays guitar right handed (and though he wasn't a star or anything in little league, he could bat acceptably on either side.) I don't remember the school giving him any trouble about writing with his left hand, but I remember my grandmother was horrified, and my mom told her off!
 
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I am right handed. When I was in school, I would try to write left handed just to irritate my teacher. I am this old, and still cannot write left handed worth a darn.
 
I am right handed. When I was in school, I would try to write left handed just to irritate my teacher. I am this old, and still cannot write left handed worth a darn.
It was part of a drill, but I remember way back when I learned how to play volleyball at a skills camp, one of the drills was to learn how to serve with the off hand. It got a little bit dangerous for anyone standing off to the side.

Also - I remember when the basketball player Bo Kimble would shoot his first free throw in a game left handed as a tribute to his deceased teammate Hank Gathers. That only lasted for the rest of that season.
 
Meanwhile my JUCO baseball coach told me the fastest way to MLB was to be a left handed hitting catcher (throw right) and it’s well known any left handed pitcher with a pulse are highly sought after lol.....
 
Handedness isn't always so cut-and-dry:

My grandmother was naturally left handed, and no one at home tried to change her -- so she ate, sewed, etc. using her left hand dominantly. However, at school they told her that only the right hand was acceptable for writing, so she was forced to learn to write with her right. She said neither she nor her parents ever questioned that writing with the right was right.

When I was in college I dated a guy who was "accidentally left handed". He said that he had been right handed, but about the time he was learning to write (kindergarten /first grade), he put something into an electrical outlet and injured his hand badly. Subsequently, he was forced to wear a bandage or cast or something on his right hand -- and since the injury occurred at a critical moment in his education, what he learned to do just "stuck".
 

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