left-handers sometimes speak of in a right-handers' world. but when i am home i know i'm living in a left-handed household when i try to take a sizzling dish out of the oven and realise that the oven glove is completely singed on the other side.

funny how my parents are the sole left-handers in their families - and i refer to family in the chinese sense - you know - sprawling arms of relatives from five generations included, but i turned out right-handed. i don't like it at all. since i was thirteen i have wanted to be left-handed like my parents. (mother: yeah, it's cos we got you out of the rubbish heap. cong la ji dui li jian hui lai de. ) i think it must be because while they're natural left-handers they're social right-handers, in that they write with their right hands and hold their chopsticks on the right, as custom dictates, and pass for right-handers in public. most people of their acquaintance don't even know that they're left-handed. the only tell-tale sign at the table is when drinking soup they automatically pick up their spoons with their left hands. but at home it's clear it's a left-hander's household. i only have to go into the kitchen and i see my mother chopping vegetables left to right, stir things in the wok with the stirrer in her left hand, grate turnip with her left. when she talks on the phone i see her jotting down notes with the left hand. stationery and documents on her desk are arranged primarily to the left whereas, even as i look up now, my things are on the right side of mine. they both hold badminton rackets and table tennis paddles with their left, and i tried the hand-fold test on my dad and his right thumb went over his left. i always feel, vaguely, that something is wrong with me at the dinner table, that i should really be using my cutlery the same way they do. i wonder if their frequent usage of their right-hand might have altered their brain development somewhat, so that i was born as if to two right-handed parents, you know, death and susan and lobsang and all.