Monday this week, I was at lunch with the family and Adam (my son) kept bumping Gabrielle (my wife) with his elbow while cutting up his breakfast burrito.
"You are on the left corner of the table! Why are you manspreading to the right?"
"I'm cutting!"
"With your right hand?"
"... yeaaaaahhhh?"
Then she looked at me. I also, as a left hander, fork with my left and cut with my right. Apparently after 25 years together we never noticed that we did this differently. Gabrielle, as a righ hander, uses the OLD european style of using the knife in the right hand then moving the fork to the right hand to eat. She's a switcher.
So I did what I do, and asked Twitter.
It's only 24 hours later currently, and I have 70ish replies - more than enough to do some analysis, so here goes.
Not a surprise, 80% of left handers do not switch. some folks cut left and some cut right, but most of us do not change hands while eating. You know what they say, left handers are in their right minds.
What WAS a surprise is that 70% of RIGHT handed respondents also do not switch. This is survey bias of my followers though. My community is, well, made up of geeks. Fully half of the folks that replied admitted that they taught themselves to not switch because it is more efficient. The other half - still bias. They are European. Which leads to a whole new question. Why?
As it turns out, there have been a few articles written about this. Originally, in Europe, switching was cool, and then it wasn't. But like with measuring, Americans didn't get the memo. I understand that. It used to be hip to put to spaces after a period. Things change.
What I don't understand is why, my results notwithstanding, it appears that left handed people keep their fork in one hand by default, and right handed people switch by default (at least in the U.S.) If you have any feedback on that, I'd appreciate insight in the comments.
Subscribe