Telephone question

[atgcpaul]

If you're right handed, to what ear do you hold the phone when you're talking? I've always held it to my left ear and I can keep doing stuff with my right.

Sometimes at work I need to be on the phone with tech support and need to keep both hands free. I don't use a bluetooth headset so I use my earbuds with the built in microphone which has the mic/earpiece on the right side. It's a little disorienting. I don't like to keep both buds in because it's helpful to hear what the machine is doing and using both buds blocks most outside noise.

Anyway, maybe it's just me. My two right handed coworkers hold the phone to their right ears by default.

[LCHIEN]

OK, left hand when talking, then when my left hand gets tired I'll switch to the right. Then, switch to Speakerphone mode for me after both hands get tired.

[Pappy]

Left handed here but hold a phone to my left ear mainly because my hearing on the right isn't very good. Go hands free if I need to write something down or hold the phone to my left ear with the right hand.

[Bill in Buena Park]

Right handed, use phone to hold phone to left ear. I think this is common among right-handers (at least in my work area), to leave the right hand free to write a note if needed.

[leehljp]

Sometimes speaker phone; most of the time in my right ear with my right hand but sometimes with left hand in left ear so that I can write.

What ever is needed at the moment for the particular situation. IN my car, I do have the car speaker / mike for incoming and outgoing calls.

I thought about blue tooth earphones/buds but I just hate putting things into my ears for conversation purposes, and I don't like them for long periods of time - an 30 minutes or more. Keeping up with them would be an exercise in futility. Worse than keeping up with keys.

[cwsmith]

I'm like you Paul... even though I am right-handed, I always hold the phone to my left ear while I use the right hand for writing. It just seems to be natural to keep my right hand free (besides, you never know when you might have to jump up and go for your gun or maybe salute).

I joined Civil Air Patrol when I was 14 , and as part of the military discipline we were taught to never carry anything in the right hand. I spent ten years there and though generally, I was in uniform only a few hours a week, it just stayed with me. Later at work, it just seemed convenient to handle calls using my left ear rather than trying to take messages and sketch out ideas while trying to cradle the phone at the same time.

CWS

[LinuxRandal]

There are inexpensive headsets, for phones (and computers) that have only one earpiece as well as a microphone.
I am not right handed, but live in a right dominant world. (so right hand holding the phone, is fine) Writing is the only thing I really don't do with both hands, although long ago I started to try to write with my right. (forced as kids, when a righty relative broke that arm and part of our punishment was to teach each other to write with the other) I keep thinking I should find a good improve your handwriting book and start using my right at home, so if the need ever arose, I could. (or could just throw people for a loop)

[atgcpaul]

Maybe I'm the messed up one. I'm a little ambidextrous, but I say I'm a righty.

--I prefer to swing a hammer with my left hand but will use my right if I can't access the location with my left.
--I use a kitchen knife with my left hand but use a utility knife with my right.
--I use a hand saw including cutting dovetails with my left, hold the chisel in my right hand and pound on it with me left.
--I can only write forwards with my right hand but can write backwards (mirror image) in cursive with my left.
--I can't backhand for my life with my right hand so I switch the racket to my left for "backhand" shots.
--I golf, bat, and throw right.

[trungdok]

I just hang up and text the person :P

[cwsmith]

I think that atcgpaul's ambidexterity is fairly rare, as I've only truely known one ambidextrous person in my life; quite a few left-handed people though. I can do some things with my left, but nothing even close to my right-hand usage. Certainly when we type or play a musical instrument, both hands get used and I imagine that we could probably train ourselves to some degree to use our other hand more efficiently.

Some folks have a tendency to enforce right-handedness though and I guess that our society and product design leans heavily on right-handedness. Not sure what difference it makes though, as I don't see left-handed as being disadvantaged to any degree, but then again I'm right handed, so perhaps I really don't realize any handicap. I do remember first or second grade when we were taught to write with an inked pen.... yep, wood handle with a nib that you dipped in an ink well (am I old or what ). If you were right-handed, your hand led the trail of ink as you moved to the right. Left handed you moved your hand through the still-wet ink, unless you moved your fingers vertically and got your palm out of the path.... I remember the teacher scolding the one left-handed pupil we had for all the smears.

My father seemed to think that left-handed was wrong and that my new baby son was showing a tendency to be left-handed when he was an infant. I guess we hadn't noticed, but it did give me a pause to think about it at the time and was wondering why. Then it dawned on me.... whenever we feed the little guy, we cradle him in our left arm, giving him the bottle with our right hand. That pins his right arm to our body and the only hand that he has to reach or move is his left. We also did the same thing whenever we held him, reading, playing, just looking at with astonishment... and that always left him with his right arm pinned. So all of his infant reactions of playing, reaching, touching were with his left hand. It was like we were training him to be left-handed! So, I started reversing how I held him just to see if it made any difference, and to some degree it did. The question I had from this was whether in those first few months of life, were we forever instilling left-handedness in him?

Not sure if any real conclusions can be made from that though. In his first few years he was pretty much ambidextrous but by the time he was four or so he became right-handed. Other than the above observation and occasional change in handling by me, I never could see pushing it. As a father, I just thought the whole idea was rather silly and looked at him as a gift no matter what. I do believe that what a parent does with their baby matters a lot however. I just liked spending time with him, to the point that I would hold him and read out loud whatever magazine or paper was in hand. Of course when he was a few months older, I could really get into Dr. Seuss. He was recognizing certain words about the same time he was walking and by three he was reading "Golden" books. At five he had a tested sixth-grade reading level.

My thoughts are that left or right doesn't matter much as so many other things are much more important,

CWS

[leehljp]

CWS
I will bet there is more truth to your ideas than we might think. That goes to personalities also - is it culture or natural (don't remember the correct termonology, but I used to know). Some things are the natural part of our own DNA and some is cultural reaction, in my opinion.

As to right hand, left hand or ambidextrous - I am right handed by nature. My dad loved baseball and wanted me to play baseball. He always said and believed that the left hand batter was a half a step closer to first base than the right hand batter. So as far back as I can remember, he trained me to bat left handed. It seems natural to me. It is difficult for me to bat right handed. I am right handed but batting feels natural left handed. Golfing - left handed. Sweeping - left handed - when my wife makes me!

And I never held a tennis racket or played tennis until I was in college. It felt a little un-natural to hold the tennis racket in my left hand, and it also felt un natural to swing as a right handed person. So I learned early to swing a tennis racket in my right hand from a back hand position, usually with both hands, like I was batting left handed and pound the tennis ball. I took a couple of tennis coaches by surprise. I didn't look natural to them! I would instinctly jump to position my body for a back hand no matter where the ball was coming from! Gradually I learned to do forehand strokes. I could do fairly well left handed but it wasn't quite as smooth as holding right handed.

[mpc]

CWS
That goes to personalities also - is it culture or natural (don't remember the correct termonology, but I used to know).

I think you mean "Nature vs. Nurture."
Personally, I think "nature" wants to prevail for left-or-right handedness though a person, especially a youngster, can be taught/trained/forced into using the non-dominant hand for handed-tasks like writing. Once older though I think it becomes much harder to fight nature. Kids brains are malleable...after the teenage years they're rock-hard.

I'm right handed... and tend to hold the phone with my right hand as well. Moving it to the left hand so the right is free to write something feels awkward. At least that was the case with "regular" telephones and older office headsets. With cell phones I tend to use speakerphone mode most of the time unless I'm at work. Then it's back to the right hand. (the new office headset doesn't work all that well with the company provided cell phone...)

I can't even begin to write left handed. Throwing? Trying that left handed makes my whole arm feel like it's a noodle - everything just feels sloppy and loose. Kicking a ball is a right foot affair as well; I used to dribble a soccer ball reasonably well which requires both feet but actually kicking left footed was never a bright idea. Same with punting a football: fine right-footed, miserable left footed. But fine tasks like working with nuts and bolts, car repair stuff, wrenches, hand planes, sanding, etc. I can do equally well with either hand. For car repair stuff access to bolts or electrical connectors or almost anything else often forces me to use the left hand - there is simply no way to stand along the passenger side the car and reach behind the engine right handed for example. I can identify quite a few car parts by feel with with either hand, start bolts or nuts blind with either hand, use either hand to fit a wrench over a bolt without being able to actually see it, etc.

I work in the Aerospace industry and sometimes get to spend time in commercial airline pilot training simulators. Those devices perfectly mimic the look and feel of a jetliner's cockpit and controls; computer software makes the out-the-window view and the simulator motion (the simulator cockpit sits on a series of hydraulic arms so it can move up/down, left/right, fore/aft, and twist in all three axes as well) very realistic. I'm used to flying "left seat" which is the Captain's side. So my right hand is on the engine throttles, left hand is on the main control yoke. Which, being right handed, means my dominant hand is working "secondary" controls. When I have to fly right seat - with my left hand on the throttles and my right hand working the primary control yoke - it feels odd though I can control the simulated aircraft equally well from either seat. Driving a stick-shift car in the US is similar - my non-dominant hand has the all-important steering wheel while my dominant hand gets the shift lever. Driving a steering-wheel-on-the-right car with my left hand on the shift lever takes a bit more concentration during shifting.

Normally though my left hand and arm are "the truck" when there is a bunch of stuff to carry... the right hand picks up items one by one and piles them onto the left arm until only one item remains and that's all the right hand carries. Trying it the other way doesn't work so well - for some reason my right arm is less able to control a pile of stuff compared to the left arm.

mpc

[capncarl]

A good many years ago my wife cousin, who was very artistically gifted had a stroke that affected her right arm/hand. Being right handed she was left still wanting to draw and paint but couldnt make her left hand do what her right hand use to do. That prompted me to "try" to use my left hand for more than just carrrying things, in case i was ever in a situation where my right hand was disabled. I finally got to where i could write a little, i could read it anyway. I still force myself to swap hands and use my left hand for stuff that is better done with my right, like painting, cutting with scisors etc. All the time when i am operating a sander I purposefully use my left hand as much as i can to operate the sander. The over use of my right hand has cause it to have carpal tunnel syndrome and probably arthritis, so any relief for it is welcomed. An accident to your dominat hand would just about put you out of woodworking hobby!

On a lighter note..... a few years back while working on the Marine base I was setting at my computer with a note pad on each side of the keyboard and scribbling notes with each hand, of course the left hand notes were barely readable, but i was just exercising writing wirh it. A couple of my co workers saw this and were impressed to no end. At a later time while i was doing this one of them went and got the director and CO, one of my co workers are had mentioned it to them that i could write with both hands as the same time and no one believe them. Unbeknown to them i had oveheard what they were up to and had swaped my left hands pad with one that had right hand writing on it that was readable. When the group of onlookers came up and saw me writng 2 handed the CO said i knew his head was screwed up but i didnt know it was this bad!

[leehljp]

On a lighter note..... a few years back while working on the Marine base I was setting at my computer with a note pad on each side of the keyboard and scribbling notes with each hand, of course the left hand notes were barely readable, but i was just exercising writing wirh it. A couple of my co workers saw this and were impressed to no end. At a later time while i was doing this one of them went and got the director and CO, one of my co workers are had mentioned it to them that i could write with both hands as the same time and no one believe them. Unbeknown to them i had oveheard what they were up to and had swaped my left hands pad with one that had right hand writing on it that was readable. When the group of onlookers came up and saw me writng 2 handed the CO said i knew his head was screwed up but i didnt know it was this bad!

LOL! FUNNY!

When I was in seminary in my late 20's, I worked night shift at a truck dock loading and unloading trucks. Got the tip of my right thumb from the back of the nail caught in a forklift and snatched off. With my hand wrapped for 8 weeks, I learned quickly to write left handed and wrote pages of finals with my left hand. Not pretty but readable.

Another note as to how much is natural and how much is "learnable". I remember a Reader's Digest funny from the '70s or so -. Three fellows were in a diner and another fellow came in and challenged (bet) different ones to write their name by looking in a mirror. When he got to the three fellows, they all did it easily. The man was flustered and asked why all three could do it so well? They replied: We are dentists, we are used to working using mirrors!