Left-handed in a Right-handed World?

So I seclude myself yesterday into my man-cave, thankful for the junked fan that blows hot air around my garage, a recusal from the torrent of this last week of societal insanity and chaos. As I loose water-weight to the heat and Zika-vectors swarming my ankles, I stand at my work bench, thankful for the comforts of my tools and my self-taught skill-set.

For almost a month I have been working through the aftermath of an apparently injured ulnar nerve that shuts down my full use of my right hand. On occasion I will don the borrowed arm sling to force myself rest for my mysterious injury, using my left hand, an unskilled proxy, an apprentice much in need of life experience, especially if my injury progresses and I no longer have the option of right-hand awesomeness. My left hand is an awkward fellow, the Napoleon Dynamite of my limbs desperately in need of some dance moves. So it was yesterday when I switch-hit for the cleanup of my yard tools that I got a glimpse of a world hidden to my left-brained lifestyle: my garage is right-handed.

You never think about it; you never need to consider it unless you have a life-altering event that shifts the frame of interacting in the confines of your comfort. My world is right-handed. I have a right-handed ignition on the car; a right-handed refrigerator door; right-handed scissors and metal shears (seriously--you try using a "lefty" scissors for a month and tell me it's no big deal). I perpetuate this invisible bias by arranging my living space to maximize the use of Righty, and I had no conscious awareness of any of this until yesterday when I was trying to hang up my square-bladed shovel in it's correct niche on the wall... I could not really do it with my left hand because of the how I arranged that physical space.

And then I thought of all the race-riots this week: Euro-cops killing Afro-civilians in Baton Rouge, and then in Minnesota; an Afro-civilian assassinating five officers in Dallas proclaiming that he wants to kill white people, especially white cops. Black Lives Matter activists plotting with officials to disrupt political conventions to create civic chaos and radical shift in power structures, countered with white-supremacist groups gearing up to counter this, or worse... use it as an excuse to perpetuate what they perceive as America. Crazy! What happened to our Country, Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty?

And then social media blew up, with non-stop slap-fighting between, "You can't understand because YOU'RE WHITE! vs "I may be white but at least I know NOT TO RESIST COPS!" vs "You don't even KNOW ME, how can you judge me.. because I'm WHITE?! /BLACK?!"... and so it went. Folks posted studies and research and opinions and pointed fingers; white scholars apologized for being white; black scholars pointed to the systemic injustices of our current culture; a few Americans walked across the street and hugged the others. And I felt it... in my right hand.

Our culture, our systems, our institutions in America... we're right-handed.
And my Irish-immigrant hands are white.

Peace.