Note: I was asked yesterday how long it takes to write these episodes. It varies.
This one took a lot of time. I deleted examples of personal success because it
sounded too much like bragging. My view
was that the elation of success came from overcoming obstacles.
EPISODE 593 LEFT HANDED and WHISTLING…. 1953
alan skeoch
june 2022
Little finger, left hand…wired back in place at St. Joseph’s hospital…a blessing.
Touch thumb of left hand to scarred baby finger…FOUND MY LEFT HAND.
SEPTEMBER 1953 WAS NOT A GOOD MONTH FOR ME
The fall of 1953 was not a very good year for me, My first year in high school should have been
exciting but instead it was frightening. Someone got access to my locker and scribbled
‘Fuck You’ on my textbooks. It wasNot difficult to figure who gave out my combination
since all Grade 9 students had to share a locker. I shared
with a boy who was not very friendly. He gave out my combination. The graffiti was disturbing but an even nastier
note came next: “Go to Western Tech after school we have a guy who wants to beat the
shit out of you.”. Who were these guys? I never found out. And I was not stupid enough to go
to Western Tech to get a beating.
It was very hard to Whistle a Happy Tune in this circumstance. Seemed that the threats
were coming from my friends. Hardly friends. The hatred might have been linked to the cigarette
smoking incident on the way to school . My chums always stopped part way to light up cigarettes.
I swiped three Craven A’s from Fran who was the pharmacist in Hertell’s Drug Store where
I was a 35 ents an hour delivery boy..Next day I Took a puff and butted the cigarette
Why am I doing this? Seemed stupid so I gave my chums the Craven A’s.
That act may have turned friends into enemies. Then again it may not have done that. I will
never know why some friends suddenly hated me. But I was scared. Alone in a new school
with enemies. Not a nice situation.
So I joined the football team and made new friends like Russ Vanstone and Jim Romaniuk and a
whole bunch of others. I was not a football hero. Couldn’t be because I had trouble telling right
from left and the coach used right and left often. I became a left guard on offence and a
left linebacker on defence. Second string that first year. Terrified the coach would call
me from the bench because i feared I would foul up.
Note: I am left handed. In Kent Public School the teachers tried to ‘break me’…to
make me right handed. I guess it did not work very well so I was allowed to reman
left handed. In the right left…left right…right left …confusion I was never able to
know right from left. That was one severe handicap in life. Only experienced by
a few left handers. About 10% of children are left handed.
Being odd. In other words being left=handed made me nervous in sports. Just try to us
a glove for right handers in baseball, The glove goes on the left hand. This means
that a left handed person has to catch the ball with his left hand then transfer the ball to
his right hand…throw off the glove…then pass the ball to the now bare
left hand before throwing the ball. Sufficei it to say that my baseball career
was deep in centre field where i hoped and prayed no batter would
ever direct the ball. I envied right handers. Tried to hide my handicap.
Now this gets me back to that first year playing football at Humberside. Second string
sitting on the bench. Assigned as a left guard whose position is so hidden that no one
ever noticed me as a left hander.. Just get the ball carrier and hurl him to the ground.. No one really cared in
the general mayhem …
Not much danger of discovery because my first year on the team was spent sitting on the bench
Fine. That’s where I wanted to be. Out of the limelight. .
The coach did not even know my name. Anonymity has its merits. But I was nervous
even on the bench. So nervous that i fell back on my favourite therapy…the song.
Whenever I feel aground
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect
I’m afraid.
That song helped wen I was doored by a car in the summer of 1953. I whistled my
way home with my left arm dangling due to broken clavicle.
But its sure did not work in my first year on the football team. I don’t expect many
of you could empathize with my disastrous whistling as I dressed in the locker room.
Shoulder pads, jock strap, boots with cleats , helmet capable of taking impact without
giving a concussion. The banter in the locker room was not relaxing. So I whistled
a happy tune.
“Who is whistling?”. demanded the coach
“WHO IS WHISTLING?, he demanded louder and the room went silient.
“Who was whistling?”
“It was me, sir.” I am not sure whether I spoke, maybe I just raised my hand.
“You…come over here..stand up on that bench.”
Then the coach looked over the team..the silent team. Seemed as if the world suddenly
ceased to orbit the sun.
“Over confidence. Being overconfident in football game leads to failure in a
team. I do not want to see overconfidence ever again. There iwill be no whistling
before our football games. Hear me. “
I will never forget the humiliation I felt standing on that bench . Never. The whole team
looked at as if I was a loser…as if I was a liability….
I hoped there was someone who understood me…understood that I was the
farthest thing from being overconfident. Humiliated. Embarrassed. But I did not cry.
Tears would have really made me look like a total loser. God I was glad
my tear ducts held the water back as I stepped down from the bench.
Note: The coach was not a bad man. There are two ways to interpret whistling.
His way…i.e. overconfidence. My way…i.e. scared to death I would not measure up.
That first year on the team was not good. But no one wanted to beat the
shit out of me.
There was another embarrassment that year when the coach called for quiet
before a game.
“Listen up boys, we have a problem.”
The room went silent. Respect to the coach.
“Our quarterback has forgotten his spikes,,,his football shoes.”
We all looked at the quarterback…the brains of the team. He gave a nervous
grin.
“One of you boys is going to have to give up his boots for the sake of the team.
Would like a volunteer.”
Doing something for the good of others seemed a holy duty…so I raised my
hand.
“Dave can have my boots, sir.”
The coach came over to my corner and looked at my boots.
“Sorry these boots are not good enough. Any one else willing >”
My boots were bad. Old with leather cracks so deep that
the boots seemed ready to crack into fragments…deep cracks.
Cracks so bad that just putting them on my feet was a painful
excercise. But I volunteered for the sake of the team and ended up
rejected once again. Not as bad as being asked to stand on a bench
but bad enough.
Sitting on the bench ended when my good ftirned Jim Romaniuk pointed at
me when the coach was looking for a second stringer when the
first one got hurt.
“OK Skeoch, get in there.”
Jesus, he knew my name. That was the beginning of a change. I wa still plenty nervous
right and left confusion. The coach taught us how to take a ball carrier down
with shoestring tackles. Grab him by the lower legs. Clench. He will fall for sure.
‘Skeoch, you wil be left guard.”
“Yes sir.”
“Keep your steps short and your legs bent….power ready”
The coach showed me where to put my feet…my head….every move…short
choppy steps that would allow me to use all the power in my body to open a ole for our fullback
with the ball.
I got good at throwing cross body blocks….
STRANGEST RESOLUTION OF LEFT RIGHT CONFUSION….THE CROSS BODY BLOCK
“Make your whole body fly sidewise through the air to cut down anyone challenging our ball
carriers.” This ‘cross body block’ changed my life somewhat.
.When I Threw my body in one game at an outside corner backer. Took him down smoothly. Unfortunately my hand was flat on the ground as I fell
and our half back tromped with his spiked boots on my bare hand. Smashed my baby finger. Left hand.
Changed my life. A doctor at St. Josephs’s hospital cut the finger open…the bones
realigned and a wire implanted down the centre for a few months. My left hand. My writing
hand was immobile. Not so good for taking notes in Grade 13 But very good for my left right handicap.
I now could find a bump on my left hand with my left thumb. (see illustration) No more confusion as long as
I had time to move my thumb to my little finger. That rather silly movement remains with me
to this day. Touching thumb to baby finger has become A reflex.
A HAPPY CIRCUMSTANCE
So there is a happy ending to the story.
The same coach who had me stand on the locker room bench for my whistling nominated me for both the
All Star Football teams in Toronto. Two very great honours.
And last month, May 2022, members of that old football team met once again as we do twice a year. Friends…good friends. Touch thumb to finger…a constant reminder of the good times.
(Burlington Country club. Picture taken for John Futa, back of photo, who was offensive end, left or right end?…not sure which it was.) I WONDER HOW MANY ARE LEFT HANDED?
alan skeoch
June 2022
Post Script: The finger operation is hard to forget. It did not go smoothly. The nurse began shaving my
right arm in prepartion for surgery. “Why are you doing that?” “To get you ready for surgery.” “But the injury
is on my left arm!” She looked at the chart and said “Sorry, wrong arm.”
Then I was wheeled on a gurney and waited for the surgery. Waited quite some time. I had been given
a local anesthetic that wore off by the time the surgery was ready. I remember the room to this day.
There were observers looking down from an open space above the operating table. I screamed when
the first cut was made. “How long has this boy been in the hall? Anastheitc has worn off.” So he gave
me another shot. I remember his name but think best not to say it. After cut, repair and stitch I went
home on the street car with a kind of throbbing pain and a reddening cast. Not pleasant at all.
And, foolishly, I continued to play football with the cast on my hand and a wire through the little finger bones.
Made one of my best tackles that day. Shoestring tackle. Days of glory.
POST SCRIPT
ON BEING LEFT HANDED…THE LATEST WORD
Right-handed people dominate the world, and it’s been that way since the Stone Age. How do we know? Researchers figured it out by measuring the arm bones in ancient skeletons and by examining wear patterns in prehistoric tools. In Western countries, lefties make up only about 10% of the population. Folks who favor different hands for different tasks (mixed handed) or who use both hands with equal skill (ambidextrous) are uncommon.
Scientists have long known that handedness is partly shaped by genes. But it wasn’t until 2019 that they identified differences in parts of the DNA of left- and right-handers. The study, which also analyzed brain scans of 9,000 British subjects, found that in lefties, the parts of the right and left sides of the brain that process language work in better tandem. Whether that makes left-handers more fluent speakers is still to be investigated.
Fetuses start to move their arms around 9-10 weeks. By early in the second trimester, the babies show a clear preference for sucking one thumb over the other. So handedness is probably hardwired before birth. Still, most development experts say parents likely won’t get a good sense of their child’s dominant hand until age 2 or 3. Many kids continue to switch hands for different tasks during early childhood.
Studies show that non-right-handed students are much more likely to struggle in school and have ADHD symptoms. That may be particularly true for those who are mixed-handed or ambidextrous. One study found that children who switch hands back and forth are about twice as likely to have dyslexia. Researchers don’t know exactly why. But they suspect that having an inconsistent dominant hand may be a bigger problem than consistent left-handedness.
Your brain’s right side controls muscles on the left side of your body and largely drives musical and spatial abilities. That may be why left-handers often hold more than their share of slots in creative professions. Mirror writing, where letters are reversed and written backward, is almost always done with the left hand. Some studies show that left-handed children score higher on verbal reasoning or are more likely to be in gifted programs. But other research differs.
In an interesting experiment with right-handed seniors, researchers found that the subjects relied less and less on their dominant hand the older they got. As their right hands grew slower and unsteady, the elderly people handled some of the tasks just as well with their left hands. But they still all saw themselves as strong righties.
Lefties appear to have an edge in sports like boxing or fencing, where they might surprise opponents used to facing off against mostly right-handers. In some years, nearly half of Major League Baseball’s All-Star roster has been southpaws or switch hitters. But that may be due less to athletic talent than to practical advantages like the fact that left-handed hitters stand closer to first base.
There’s a well-established link between left-handedness and mental conditions like schizophrenia, which can cause hallucinations and impaired thinking. A large recent study in the U.K. found a strong link between regions of the brain involved in handedness and how likely you are to have mood swings, restlessness, and neuroticism, a personality type marked by anxiety and fear that sometimes can veer into mental disorder.
We’re not the only animals with a handedness trait. Researchers watching wild chimps found they favor their left hands twice as often when fishing for termites. And the same was largely true for chimpanzees raised in captivity. But results were different for nut-cracking. For that task, which requires sheer force instead of the fine motor skills needed for extracting insects, wild chimps were much more likely to favor their right hands.
Cultural biases against left-handers has existed throughout history. In the Middle Ages, the devil was believed to be a lefty. In Japan, China, and other Asian countries, the percentage of left-handers is much smaller than in the West. American teachers and doctors in the early 1900s believed that left-handers were more prone to mental disorders and pressured students to switch hands.
Four of the six most recent U.S. presidents were lefties: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Celebrity southpaws include Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Tom Cruise, Paul McCartney, Prince Charles, and his son, Prince William.
If you’re a righty and ever used your left hand to cut with scissors, you know it’s awkward. Lefties can find a growing number of products for the kitchen, office, and elsewhere that are designed with them in mind. You can buy knives with the sharpened edge on the right side of the blade for cleaner slicing. Or a measuring cup with unit labels that face you when you hold it in your left hand.
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