The BDN’s Feb. 26 editorial cartoon shows President Obama signing the federal stimulus bill with his now-familiar “left hook.” That refers to neither boxing nor politics, but his way of signing documents, in which he appears to wrap his left hand in front of his signature, instead of allowing it to flow “normally,” that is to say, the way a right-handed person would. It has attracted a certain amount of attention, not to say puzzlement.
As a leftie myself, I think I can explain.
Years ago, in 1943, long before the birth of either President Obama or the ball-point pen, we second-graders sat at desks with inkwells. You’ve probably seen the desks at museums or antique stores, and you may have noted that the holes for the inkwells were always on the right-hand side. This created a problem for us southpaws. (This is a phrase drawn from old-time baseball, in which ballparks were usually designed so that batters would always face east, thus avoiding the sun in the afternoon. A left-handed pitcher facing the batter would have his arm on the south side of the stadium. But I digress.)
In those days, in order to dip our pens in the inkwell, we left-handers had to reach across the desk, running the risk of smearing the ink. (Try it, if you don’t believe me.) Most of us solved the problem by holding the pen, as it were, upside down, much in the way President Obama holds his.
However, my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Stevenson, at the Forest Avenue Grade School in Brockton, Mass., had a different approach. She told me to turn my paper counter-clockwise, so the upper left-hand corner was higher than the upper right-hand corner, thus avoiding the smeared-ink problem. (She was probably a leftie herself, but I didn’t notice it at the time.) Ever since, I have re-tilted papers presented to me by hotel clerks, lawyers, petition-circulators, and others seeking my signature.
Apparently, President Obama never had a Mrs. Stevenson in his youth. I can’t tell whether he uses ball-point pens or wet-ink pens for his signings, but apparently he is hooked on the wrap-around method. If he isn’t, then someone, perhaps Mrs. Obama, needs to tell him to tilt his papers counter-clockwise, just as Mrs. Stevenson did for me over 65 years ago.
Neither Mrs. Stevenson nor the Forest Avenue Grade School is with us any longer, but the problems faced by us lefties remain. Both the president and I still have to deal with keys that don’t work, scissors that don’t cut, and coffee mugs with the picture on the wrong side. Moreover anyone who has studied Latin knows that the word for “left” is “sinister,” and Francophones know that the word for “left” is “gauche.”
Neither of these words in American English is particularly complimentary.
Overcoming these and other cultural biases probably explains why lefties like President Obama and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush tend to be over-achievers.
By the way, I noticed that Sen. John McCain is a southpaw too.
So no matter how last year’s election turned out, at least in one sense, it was going to be a triumph for the left.
Lynn Hudson Parsons lives in Castine. He is professor emeritus of American history at the State University of New York, College at Brockport.