Left-handed concerns

Nora Soriño .

ILIGAN City — Jim,  a 14-year-old kid, recently asked me if there is a school for the “walhon.”

Caught with the suddenness of such kind of question, I was speechless for several seconds. Then I said, “The UP. You go to school there and then before you know it, you’re leftist.”

I meant it as a joke and as a serious answer, too.

But Jim said, “No, I mean, for the left-handed.”

That did it. Suddenly, the struggles of a left-handed person came to life.

Ram at age 3 already knew how to read. So I realized he was a bright boy.

He was. He was also left-handed. But no problem. There are so many left-handed persons in the world. Or so, I thought. For being bright and good-looking, he’d breeze through life.

It wasn’t meant to be. For along with Ram’s being left-handed, he had also some speech difficulty. Through his young life, he stuttered his words that began with the letters, K, T and P.

The poor kid as a result of such was being bullied. I mean, his stuttering. Of course, in addition to being left-handed.

He then developed some complex. “Inferiority complex,” they say. So, he struggled through life with that. I read somewhere that many left-handed persons also have some speech difficulty. And this was Ram’s case.

It’s really unfair for a left-handed person to grow up in a world where everything is made for the blokes who are not left-handed. It’s almost like a disability. So should they be considered “differently abled?”As in “disabled”?

In a way, they are. For once, when I saw Ram holding a guitar and learning to play it, I saw the absurdity in it, even bizarre.

Nonetheless, he finished the course of Chemical Engineering, the bullies in his left-handed and stuttering life notwithstanding.

Then it was time to take the board exams for his course to really be called “engineer,” a “chemical engineer.”

They were to use fountain pens in the exams, the reviewers reminded them. Of course, it was understood that with those kinds of pens, they had to use their right hands.

Right hands! What was Ram to do under those circumstances? He could not back out. He was a “pag-asa ng bayan,” considering that his parents had only meager resources.

He then resolved to train himself to use his right hand. If only for the exams.

So, aside from studying for the answers for the board, he also had another kind of studying. That of using his right hand.

Poor kid. Really, really poor kid.

And during the exam days, which were in some school in Cebu City, he came up with LBM, loose bowel movement.

A friend gave him a “cure” for the LBM. But the latter persisted. He considered backing out from the exams. In the end though, he decided going through with it, come hell or high water. Come left handedness, come stuttering, come LBM. It was a “go” really.

To make it worse, some questions in the exams were real hard.

When it was over, the LBM also stopped. And he told everybody he knew that he was readying himself for another board exam, maybe next year. As in “repeat.” He went then to the extent of compiling his review materials. “For next year.” Never say die, that is.

Mercifully, he passed. His mama had a fit. Maybe of extreme happiness!

I then remember some quote: “Those who cannot taste the bitterest of life’s bitters cannot taste the sweetest of life’s sweets.” Maybe this was Ram’s case.

And recently, without much fanfare or without much publicity, I came across RA 11394 or the Mandatory Provision of Neutral Desks in Educational Institutions Act. This was signed into law Aug. 22 this year by President Duterte. The measure’s main proponent was Sen. Sonny Angara, it was learned. With this, left-handed students no longer have to contort themselves when writing using right-handed school desks and endure back, neck and shoulder pains in the process. This is only on the physical aspect. As to the emotional as in Ram’s case? A question mark still. But a good beginning for sure.

The change in the desks will not be immediate as things like this, takes time. Start of such kind of desks is 2020 and by 2025, all the desks should be fully compliant. Meaning, the desks should be both for the right-handed and the left handed students.

I saw Engr. Ram recently and he did not stutter anymore. Still, he is left-handed. He said he had undergone some self improvement course. Of course, he has now a lovely wife, and good kids.

I told him about such law. He smiled.

The law, though not very well known or did not quite make an impact like that of “Mental Health Law” nonetheless impacted on this writer.

Ram, by the way, is a sibling, a brother.