My Left Hand

My Left Hand

Readers will want to know how my left hand is doing these days. Thanks for asking. It’s a very interesting question. My left hand is in a period of transition. Its knife throwing ability is making steady progress—getting harder and faster all the time (though still sometimes missing). It keeps on surprising me. In tennis it continues to progress, though slowly. Yesterday, playing Eddie, it really showed up for work: it is even dominating my dominant hand. It hits the ball confidently, treating my right hand as its assistant not its superior. It took a couple of years, but here it is. I owe it a debt of gratitude, because without it my tennis game would have been a shadow of its former self. I would have been greatly diminished. As to guitar, my left hand’s thumb has been making its mark in the fretting department, claiming its rightful heritage. This is actually an excellent way to play guitar—unleash the thumb! It’s starting to feel easy and natural, part of normal playing. No one is more surprised than me. A round of applause for the thumb!

But there is one more area, which I’ve been saving for last, because I never thought I would live long enough to see this happen. The other day, on a whim, I decided to see if I could do a table tennis serve with my left hand. It was pretty bad but showed signs of improvement as I repeated the action (forehand and backhand). Then I tried hitting rally shots this way; also bad, but capable of improvement. Naturally, I practiced for a couple of hours straight with commendable results. Next day I was hitting topspin smashes, forehand and backhand, with my left hand! Those of you who follow these things will know that this is a quite remarkable occurrence, and I think it’s possible only because of my other left-handed activities. Since then, I have played this way with a couple of people, a beginner and a more advanced player; I won’t say my hand shone but it put in a perfectly credible performance. At 75 I have become a left-handed table tennis player. I now have two players in me, corresponding to right and left. My brain is having to keep pace. I’m living the sinistral life. I’m a bi-manual.