This morning when I was sitting downstairs after just having gotten dressed to go to work, I was faced with a problem. The shirt I was wearing today has three buttons down the side of each wrist cuff, and hence that means that there were a total of six buttons in reasonably hard to reach places to do up - to do these particular buttons up I was forced to use one hand to maneuver the button (the action hand), while the other one just sits there having the button jammed into it so it will stay still (the useless hand). It’s not like this was my first day wearing a shirt with difficult buttons on the cuffs, and so I just did it and got the job done… eventually.

Now I am right handed. Hence, my right hand is considered my stronger, dominant hand. It is the hand that I do everything with. If I need to write a note to my boss explaining exactly why I felt it neccessary to throw a computer out of a 24th story window, my right hand is the one to do it. If I need to throw a tennis ball at anyone in particular for some undisclosed reason, my right hand is the one to do it. Simply put, my right hand is my go-to-guy for anything and everything that can be done one-handed. However, after today that may very well change. In fact, I may start considering my left hand, my non-dominant hand, the one I go to when the right isn’t available, for certain task.

You may be wondering just what triggered this immense policy change on the subject of dominant hands, and how this has to do with buttons on my shirt sleeve… So I will tell you. Well I started to do up these buttons, starting with the right-hand side, of course. That means that I was using my left hand as the action hand, and the right was playing the role of useless. Overall there were no issues in my hand performing this task. Sure, it took a little longer than I would have wanted to spend on doing up a couple of buttons, but it got done in the end without any harm and so I was happy. Then it came to doing up the buttons on my left arm and the whole thing started to unravel. My right hand was, as usual, my action hand in this case, and my left was useless. Actually, to be honest both hands were completely useless. For some reason I couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of holding the button and feeding it through the hole in the shirt. That meant that my right hand would have to hold the button with my index and middle finger, while holding the shirt in place with the others. My right hand couldn’t manage this. It took my right hand over twice the time it took my left to do up these three buttons, and in the process from having my fingers digging into the side of a button for a little while there was mild pain involved. I was not impressed in any sense of the word.

During this ordeal I stopped for a moment to think - “if my right hand is so bloody dominant, then why the hell can’t it do up these damn buttons!?” I would like to apologise to anyone who thinks that it swearing and hence is not Australian, but I would prefer to retell this story honestly and that requires this language. Anyway, so I started to rethink the whole dominance situation of my two hands. I realised that while, yes, my right hand is indeed much stronger than my left (I’d say because it gets used a lot more) it is dominant in situations where strength is needed - say when I need a jar open, or when I need to top someone in strength of a hand shake (believe me, it is a very important topic) - it is no where near as helpful in delicate situations that require more maneuverability and dexterity to achieve the task - such as doing up a button (we can’t all use stripper-clasps). In the end it came down to the same argument that has plagued mankind for centuries, the argument of brain versus brawn. So simply put, my right hand is the ripped guy at the beach wearing not much and for some reason disturbingly shiny, while my left hand is the one sitting in his mother’s basement reading nuclear physics textbooks and destroying his “friends” in internet chess.

But that still begs the question - which is dominant? If we continue with the brain versus brawn argument, which is more dominant in the world today? Well, there is no answer to that question. In every situation it generally takes a combination of the two to overcome the opposition. It took brainy scientists to develop the bomb, but it took brawny soldiers to deliver it. It took brainy scientists to develop protien shakes, but it took brawny body-builders to overdose the stuff and end up to the point where they look like if you jab them with a pin that they would literally pop… But, if we take the argument down to its basest level, the lowest possible denominator - if the chess-playing mammas-boy and the strangely-shiny body-builder were about to “throw down” in a dark alley behind a bar somewhere because the chess-playing mammas-boy was stupid enough (he should know better) to calculate the mathematical possibility of the strangely-shiny body-builder realising that he’s chatting up a guy in drag… I would have to side with brawn.

So what is the overall conclusion of this peversely-sidetracked article? While I have recently come to recognise that my left hand can be extremely useful in several situations, I am still going to rely on my right hand as my dominant hand when I get into a bar fight… It can hit harder…

NOTE:
Now while I know this is probably going to be ignored, please don’t be offended if you believe you fit into any of the stereotypes I’ve mentioned in this article. I promise I did not mean you. I do not even know you, so for you “brainy” ones, think about how I could possibly refer to you if I don’t even KNOW you, and you “brawny” ones… Look! There’s something shiny behind you!!