i have a beautiful handwriting (another self-declared statement) with my default writing hand, my right hand. i have dreamed of writing nicely using my left hand. early this year (or was it late last year?), i tried to write using my left hand. i even bought a composition notebook (that thing with blue-red-blue lines on it) for my left hand lessons, thinking that it’s the best way to start. but then it was a little hard to follow on meetings and other writing stuffs. so there, i gave up teaching my left hand to write and continue with my default writing hand.
then these japanese classes came into my life and, again, i thought about teaching my left hand to write. this time, i thought, is like a real beginning. it’s like a nursery class. i never knew any japanese characters, and so was my left hand. then there again, i bought special notebooks and special big pencils for my left hand, thinking that i was still in pre-school learning japanese writing-a-b-c, this time with my left hand.
at first it was quite enjoyable, seeing both my hands work at the same time. you know, i write japanese with my left, and the english translation with my right… all at the same time, on my special notebook but different pens of course. but as the sessions grew harder and harder, i began to ditch my “left hand dreams” and carry on with the default one. it was hard.
i realized that it was really hard to change something that you have gotten used to since childhood. or to make it more general… it is really difficult to teach something that is too stubborn to learn.
he said, she said, i said