I'm left handed and I fly-fish, and work a rifle-bolt right-handed. I guess those aren't included in the 'laterality quotient.'

I had always assumed that novel skills could be learned however you were first instructed (left or right), but that writing had some intrinsic property that involves a preference from an early age, maybe because a young child is given crayons to play with before they formally learn to 'write', so they're not given instruction in that per-se and their natural preference dominates. That fetal orientation hypothesis seems like kind of the same deal.

I've cut myself from goofing around with knives plenty of times, but I can't for the life of me understand why you would attribute cutting yourself to 'handedness' instead of chalking it up to a simple lapse in attention. That anecdote seems strange. The author wasn't paying attention so they didn't notice they were holding a knife backwards. Maybe I'm missing some concept that someone else can explain?

For all those super-smart famous lefties, I'm one too, so it certainly isn't some marker for creative genius, that's for sure.

It nice to know that I'm in the same club as "such notable specimens as Plato, Charles Darwin, Carl Sagan, Debbie Millman, Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, and Albert Einstein"!

"The most visceral evidence is found on my left thumb, whose pad an elongated scar splits vertically. It was inflicted while carving a watermelon jack-o-lantern at age six and accidentally flipping the knife the wrong way, pressing onto its edge rather than its blunt side. The fact that I held the knife in my left hand is cited to this day as indication of my natural left-handedness."

Right! This southpaw's right-hand scar is on my palm between my thumb and finger and comes from an altercation with a woodworking chisel when I was at school. The woodworking teacher was very explicit about what not to do but I did it all the same (...and I've the perfect excuse; after all, I'm a southpaw!)

"The fact that I held the knife at all is cited as indication of questionable parenting."

What utter bullshit, if ever there was an illustration of soft pathetic, wishy-washy, namby-pamby over-protection of kids these days then this has to be it. For starters, how would she eat without a knife and fork? By hands I suppose. Or what if she were in the army (women are these days you know) and she had to use a German MG42 or an American M60, etc? Both of which are just a whisker more dangerous than a knife, methinks.

Much fertile ground here and I could go on for ages but I'll finish with a startling revelation for right-handers. A piano is a right-handed instrument for all but the best players (and that's inclusive of both right and left-handers), as the tune/melody bit is usually played on the middle and upper registers by the right hand. True professionals are of course equally ambidextrous with both hands. That said, this southpaw—having never really practiced the way my piano teacher demanded, thus now very mediocre on the ivories—is, unsurprisingly, much, much stronger in the right hand than the left!

Curious isn't it?