[TeMPOraL]

Doubly so if you're left-handed.

I thought left-handed scissors are some bullshit sales tactic to eke out some extra cash out of clueless people, until I saw someone on HN explain why "handedness" of scissors is a thing - and then I finally connected the dots and realized why my (then) 4yo daughter is struggling with scissor crafts so much. Got her a pair of left-handed scissors and, lo and behold, her cutting improved on the spot.

(We then bought some more and gifted them to her kindergarten, to make sure she and other left-handed kids have a pair when needed, because the idea was new even to some of the personnel there.)

[alias_neo]

The thing about being left-handed, is that as you get older, you generally become reasonably proficient at doing things right handed, because the world is built for right-handed people, but from my experience, never quite get the same level of control.

I do quite a few things right handed, some I only do right-handed; and interestingly, I have more strength/power in my right arm/hand but have more control with my left.

Left-handed scissors are something I've known about ever since I can remember, but given how infrequently I use them, I've never bothered to buy a left-handed pair, and continue to just struggle along the couple of times I do need to use them.

My kids seem to switch back and forth between left and right, but they're still young, so I'm keeping an eye out for either of them being left-handed so I can help make things easier for them (an excuse to get some left-handed scissors perhaps?) if it does turn out to be the case.

[Freak_NL]

My house has a number of left-hand scissors for me and my wife, but only since half a decade or so. For most of our lives right-handed scissors dominated, and no one ever seemed to care in schools etc., whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point.

My son, fortunately for him, is right-handed. I have no doubt that this saves him a lot of frustration.

If you are left-handed and reading this, get yourself some nice left-handed scissors. Trust me.

[rapnie]

> no one ever seemed to care in schools etc., whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point.

Older generations were actively trained to 'become' right-handed. My father at school used to get slapped on the hand with a ruler by the teacher, whenever he took his pen in the left hand.

[alias_neo]

> whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point

Writing was the bane of my life in high-school, where they insisted we use fountain pens; I had no idea left-handed fountain pens existed. Even with a more suited pen, I imagine it wouldn't resolve the issue of running your hand through the wet-ink you've just laid down.

That was some decades ago now, and I intend never to write with one again, so there's that.

EDIT: I just realised I still have my the last fountain pen I used at school (25+ years ago?) in my pen-holder and grabbed it, it's a Parker Frontier, steel with "gold" accent/clip. I still have a strange fondness for that pen despite not ever wanting to write with it again.

[Freak_NL]

I think it was one of those phases education went through. My writing isn't bad even, but that is despite some of the pedagogical approaches in vogue at the time. I remember getting a left-handed work book for practising the loops and waves in the first grade as a step before actual writing, and the approach used went so far as to demand left-handed children write with a backwards slant! Pure lunacy for kids learning to write. I never accepted that idea and just went on smudging my paper until ballpoints took over.

Now I write using a Japanese Kurutoga mechanical pencil. No pens for me if I can help it.