Stokes Ford, of Hyattsville, is a retired Environmental Protection Agency worker who wrote the recently published book “Left-Handers & Right-Handers: All of Us Are Clueless.”
Where did you get the idea for the book?
My nieces called me, and they said, “Aunt Tonya, we have a math problem here.” The problem was Farmer Brown wanted to knit caps and mittens for himself, his wife and 25 cows. So of course, the answer is 104 mittens and 27 caps. But as a left-hander, that wasn’t my first answer. I said, “Are they teaching kids that cows wear clothes?”
So your first instinct wasn’t to do the math?
Yes, yes. While they were laughing, my middle niece said, “Why are you laughing, Aunt Tonya? That’s what I thought, too,’ and I went, ‘She’s left-handed, like I am.” And I said, “put your mother on the phone.”
So what happened?
I said to my sister, “What is going on?” You know, a righty says something, and a lefty hears it and processes it completely differently [than] what was intended by the righty. And I said, someone needs to write a book about that.
What’s in the book?
I went and got stories from lefties and righties about the quirky things that happen. For instance, when I go out to eat with a large group of people, I request to sit on the end or inside on the wall, because if I’m in the middle, it’s … very odd, because you’re always clicking elbows with the righties.
Are you hoping to make it a little less of a right-handed world?
You know, that would be nice. The norm, though, is right-handed. I just want people to be aware of a lefty, especially a child. It can be so frustrating.
– David Sherfinski
