I’m a left-handed person and I actually find it cool to be one. That is correct, I ‘m extremely proud of being a southpaw and have never for a moment changed the way I feel about it. For me, it just helps me stamp my individuality more, and I’m pretty big on individuality. I want to be able to do what I want and express myself the way that I want to, that has always been my belief and nothing can ever change that. There is also the fact that I find it challenging to live in a world that seems to have been designed and then built for right-handed people. Now that simply motivates me to strive and be better, eventually showing other people that southpaws are quite normal too.
Being left-handed brings with it its own unique sets of challenges. One of the earliest things that I learned was that I couldn’t learn how to play some musical instruments as easily as I wanted to. That’s because the instruments that I wanted to play were designed for right handed people, instead of southpaws like me. Like the guitar, for instance, it is definitely usually designed for right handed people. What we did was to have a specific guitar custom made for me so that I’d eventually learn how to play the instrument. And since I was really determined to learn the guitar, I was able to do it. Although I must admit that it was not before a whole bunch of disappointments and frustrations.
The Left Handed Violin
A greater challenge awaits me. It is all about my interest to learn a new instrument, and it is not just any instrument, mind you. Let me say that it is my dream musical instrument, the violin. When I was still hard at work on the guitar, I was already setting my sights on that other popular stringed instrument. But the question that continually kept dogging me was about the physical instrument itself. Are there violins for left handed people? I was resolved to find out, and should there be any, to learn how to play it as much as possible.
What I learned was that in the past, left handed violin players were forced to play the instrument the way that right handed people do. This means that the violin is held by the left and rests on the left shoulder, while the right hand holds and uses the bow. Fortunately, the concept of having what is known as a left handed violin has slowly gained ground and is now more accepted. This is made possible by using a kind of violin that is specifically made for this purpose, and it has only been done and accepted in the last few years. A violin of this kind is a mirror image of the usual, right handed violin. However, a right handed violin cannot be converted into a left handed one. It has to be constructed from scratch and specifically intended to be a left handed violin, for use by a left handed individual.