Straight away, to save you the bother, in my case, the answer is ‘no’. Not the most emphatic no, but since apparently only 1% of the population is ambidextrous, and it’s mostly an hereditary thing, and I was clearly born right-handed, I cannot pretend to be ambidextrous. But can you ‘learn’ to be ambidextrous? Can you become a little more ‘ambidextrous’ by working on it? I guess you can, to some extent, and it’s something I’d always wished to be. Maybe it’s my ‘perfectionist’ side, the ideal in me looking for balance and who thought being only one-sided was never a good idea. I can’t recall everything but I guess this started in early teenage years. I remember kicking a football with my Dad, practicing shots and trying to improve my left foot. I remember forcing myself to play table tennis with my left hand and making pretty decent progress at it. At some point, I also tried to teach myself to write with my left hand (hell, hardly anybody ‘writes’ these days, see the blog on the topic, now we mostly ‘type’, so not necessarily a useful skill), but that was just too hard. I tried to write lines, bought notepads to practice on, but I never felt I progressed quickly enough so I eventually gave up. Yet, there are things I learnt to do only with my left hand. Like shaving. I can’t remember if it was a conscious decision at the time, but it’s never ever occurred to me to shave with my right, it’s just a learnt thing now. I always hold stuff (cigarettes when I used to smoke, drinks definitely) with my left hand, and again on this, I don’t know if it’s a learnt habit or just an evolution, but it seems more natural to me to hold objects in my left hand. And still now, it’s a reflex. So have I become more left-handed? Possibly. It’s a bit weird, mostly I don’t think of it but I observe myself (my quality/vice, very INFP perhaps….), and yet there are situations when I have to consciously choose whether to use the left or the right. Say, when opening a door, sometimes, I base myself on relative locations of hand and object, or the presence of a person nearby. Most of the time I don’t think yet use indifferently the left or right hand. Same with screwdrivers (sometimes have to use them at work), I can use the left or the right based on relative positions. Entering a PIN code? Same. So yeah, guess that’s confusing though I have no idea if most people always use the same hand or if it’s just normal. Mostly, I guess I’m lazy so I take the option that involves less effort/change to my current position. But there’s no doubt I’m actually more agile with my right hand/foot than with the left (though I can pass very well with my left, sometimes better than the right, a recent injury also has also led me to work a little more on using my left peg at football). Does my switch to English/England has anything to do with all of this? I don’t think so, but sometimes I wonder, since the English do everything in reverse, right? And when I moved to study in England for a year, I made a deliberate decision to think in English (that is ‘conscious’ thoughts, I guess, again no idea if that’s normal, and suspect it’s a very INFP thing), and I have stuck to that ever since, so 90% of my thinking/internal monologue is in English, and most of the time even in real life with certain people I don’t even remember if I spoke in French or English. Anyway, slight digression there, but left and right have always confused me to some extent, I remember using a ‘mnemonic’ trick to remember my left from my right by looking at a damaged finger.
A couple more points that would confuse people if they see it without knowing and could make people assume I am left-handed if they don’t ask.
I now wear a watch on my right wrist. It wasn’t always thus, though there’s a bit of history there. I remember as a teenager those lovely first Swatch watches. Can’t remember exactly if it’s how it started, but I found myself with two of them (just because I liked their looks or was I offered two?) so at some point, on those days when I wanted to be more symmetrical, I wore a watch on each wrist. I can’t remember when or how I gave up on that, just at some point, with mobile phones being prevalent etc, though that was many years later, I stopped wearing any watch altogether as I could have the time on my phone. At a much much later point when I started doing more sports again and wanted to measure times and heartrates, I bought a watch/chronograph again, and wore it only left wrist. And it stayed that way for many more years. The opportunity to buy one of these new connected trackers I was curious about appeared at some point, so I got another ‘watch’ to wear on my wrist. But as the chronograph function wasn’t to my taste (the problem with all these items is battery so they’re not on all the time), and because I was doing regular runs and needed the old timer on the left wrist, I just wore this new watch on the right. And so for a short while I was wearing a watch on each wrist again (this was only a couple of years ago…). But post-COVID, travelling again either by plane or the Eurostar, I felt that while having to take one watch out for security control was a pain, having to take out two was just too much. And as I was running less frequently (going out more and playing more football, and sometimes running at work when I didn’t have to take the same timing references than when running in Sceaux when I have my set course), I thought I’d ditch the original chronograph worn on the left wrist, and wear it only for those occasional Sceaux runs. Why not move the new tracker watch to the left? Two reasons really. First, I didn’t want to bother changing the settings and one of the first settings you do is tell if you are wearing it on the left or right wrist. And second, I do still like my occasional eccentricities/originalities, so why wear a watch on the left when I can wear it on the right? It really takes the exact same effort for checking the time, you just look the other way, nae bother. So you see, I am now wearing my watch on the right hand wrist, and it has nothing to do with being left-handed.
The other one is the mouse. I now put my mouse to the left of my laptop. Again, there is a story behind. A few years ago, I had some weird pains in my right arm (probably a nerves thing) that made it very uncomfortable to use. So to ease the burden on it, I used my mouse on the left-hand side.
And when my right arm got back to normal (a gradual thing anyway, so there was no exact moment when switching back would have made sense), I just kept that specificity because why not? I got used to it. I believe I am still however less precise using my mouse with the left hand, even after five years more or less of doing so, but it’s just a habit. Nothing to do with being left-handed.
So there you have it, I may be more left-handed than most right-handed people, through work and some habits rather than naturally, I think, but I won’t pretend that I’m not a right-hander. But I like it that way, I find more balance if not being wholly one-sided, even if that might confuse a lot of people and sometimes confuses me too. But you know, balance is what I aspire to, always, a more serene happiness.
(edit: 24/6/2023 : over a week later, observation without first thinking shows me I definitely grasp objects with my left hand naturally and instinctively now. Also don’t think I mentioned but I brush my teeth with my left hand (same as shaving then), and I have absolutely no idea if it was always thus).