I take myself too seriously, sometimes.  This can lead to learning experiences  -  like yesterday.

The working group meeting was boring, and the Tennessee outdoors setting was so inviting.  I think we all wished the official proceedings could be aborted so we could really retreat on this "retreat."  We had assembled for the annual inter-agency aviation safety workshop.

My attention was wandering, and I found myself sensing that there was something unusual about the way the person next to me, a Delta Airlines pilot, was taking notes.  He was writing with his left hand, which by itself isn't unusual, but he was using the normal right hander's pencil grip, and that is unusual.  The normal left-hander employs the awkward-looking "hooked" pencil grip.  I knew from my neuropsychology reading that only about 1% of the population is left-handed in this manner.  I've been alert to this 1% because they are conjectured to have brain function lateralized in a manner opposite to the other 99%.  That is, whereas language function is found in the left cerebral hemisphere for 99% of the population, it is located in the right cerebral hemisphere for 1%.

In order to verify that the 1% who wrote left-handed with the right-hander's pencil grip are indeed the same 1% with opposite lateralization, I've recruited as many of my friends and acquaintances as possible to take a tachistoscopic language location test that I run on my home computer.  I am also keeping track of the special abilities, and handicaps, of people in this category.  A pilot in this rare category was a potentially useful piece of information.  If only I could learn more about him for my survey!

The next day, while walking to our committee room, I found myself walking beside him; so I commented that I noticed something interesting about the way he was writing his notes yesterday.  Before I could explain the significance of his left-handed pencil grip, he said "yeah, it was pretty boring yesterday, and I was amusing myself by trying to write left-handed!"
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This site opened:  October 30, 1998.   Last Update: October 30, 1998