The Left Hand Of God

There are times in life when we can feel, almost see, the hand of God reaching through the clouds and creating miracles, or at least mysteries, in the world around us. Those are moments that I cherish.

I’m proctoring tests this week, and that is always a time that is rich in mystery and wonder. It provides me with an intense immersion in Thai language, because there are usually no English speakers around to make me lazily speak only English. And consider the test takers. Tests are always a time of stress, and it is always interesting to observe people under stress. (Particularly when you are not under stress yourself.) I actually calculated the other day just how much proctoring I’ve done at my current job. Ten years, five test sessions every year, two long, two short, about twenty-five days per year, so then, 250 days all together of proctoring tests. It’s been interesting. That should surprise no one who knows me.

One thing that I habitually do is gauge the incidence of left-handedness in the room. This is on a session by session basis, two sessions per day. The big pattern is that the incidence of left-handedness has been going down over the last ten years. There are occasional spikes, however, and this current four-day session is one of them.

On the first day I noticed more left handers than I had become accustomed to. I chalked this up to the subject matter: mathematics and accounting. For some reason, those two subjects attract more than the average number of left-handed people. On the second day, yesterday, all hell broke loose.

For the afternoon session, with no math or accounting in sight, it came to pass that the number three seat in rows one, two, three, four, five, and six, were all left handed. Different subjects for odd and even rows, all seats assigned strictly by student number, and yet six students in a row, crosswise, were left handed. It was like waking up in a mirror-world. To make matters more bizarre, anywhere that I stood in my side of the room, I could look around and find a few lefties immediately.

Alive with excitement and wonderment at this once in a lifetime vision, I sought to share this information with my new friends. “Look! Seat number three! Six in a row! All left-handed!” I got that now all too typical reaction: a slight smile of bemusement at the silly things that Farang find interesting. First there’s a, “so what?” moment as the Thais realize what you are talking about, and this is followed by a more profound, “so what?” when they realize that you think that this stuff is fascinating.

Today the occurrence of lefties was hardly noticeable, as has become the norm in recent years. But even Mr. Jesus did not multiply loaves and fishes every day. Yesterday was some kind of mysterious, dare I say miraculous, event. I witnessed the left hand of God come through the clouds and create something unusual. I may have been the only one to notice, but that alone does not make me crazy. It really happened! I swear!

An Outbreak Of Left-Handedness

My firm impression is that left-handedness has been in full retreat for all of my life. I attribute this to forced-right-handedness, which I am pretty sure is an actual thing and not a figment of my imagination. People just can no longer bear the thought of subjecting an apparently left-handed child to a lifetime of annoyance, and some physical pain, at the hands of machines, devices and contraptions that were designed for the comfort and convenience of right-handed people. To see what I mean, go and try to cut something holding the scissors in your left hand. Or imagine the difficulty of renting left-handed golf clubs.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, left-handed. But my father is left-handed, and a close cousin of mine is as well. So I have heard the complaining. Pay phones were a common object of hatred, as was the entire concept of handwriting.

I arrived in Thailand over ten years ago and I was surprised at the number of left-handed students. In classes of students numbering in the mid-forties, there’d usually be half a dozen or so. That seemed high to me. I taught a class of forty-five seventeen-year-olds that included thirteen left-handed students. I remember thinking, that’s great, they let the lefties be lefties over here. Must be a Buddhist thing. Things have changed over time.

I’ve been teaching at my big university for over eight years now. Several times every year I proctor tests, and I always scan my quadrant of the room for left-handers. Without having made a science of it, I’m prepared to say that the numbers have gone down over time. I’ve written about it hereon already. Sometimes, though, there’s a sudden outbreak, an unaccountable bulge in the left-handed population. I cannot even speculate as to the why or how, although I might, just a little.

Sometimes it seems to be a particular subject that has drawn the attention of a lot of lefties. Perhaps the left-handed brain is also predisposed to the study of certain things. Mathematics? Chinese language? Further study would be required, and I am not so disposed.

My proctoring this time lasted nine days, and over that entire time every group of test takers included a greater number of left-handers that I’ve become accustomed to. Usually I need to walk the isle for a good stretch, searching through a few isles to the left and right, to come across the first lefty. Last week, anywhere I stood I could look around and find a few immediately. On a couple of occasions I could see two sitting in a row, one right behind another. One row of thirteen test takers included five lefties! Every one of the nine days was the same. It was an outbreak of left-handedness.

It has always been a blessing to me to be so interested in the world’s mundanities. Very good luck, that.