Friday, May 4, 2012

left handed

"Bi-handual." It is a term a coined long ago (junior high, to be exact without an exact date, to describe someone who could spike a volleyball with both hands--yes, the years long ago when i "played" "real" sports [the quotations say enough here...]) and still use today, when i just simply cannot bring to tongue "ambidextrous."
i am trained at bi-handualism (thats right, i am manipulating correct English grammar to encompass my made-up, non-English, somewhat-already-grammatically-correct-if-you-really-think-about-it-and-at-the-very-least-comprehendable-word, further yet) only out of necessity. Meaning, if i need my strong right hand for very important matters such as operating my coffee grinder, my left hand is fully capable of brushing my teeth (note, i set my percolator up the night before; i do not make a habit of minting up my mouth pre-expresso). Or, if i need my right hand to fluidly one-finger type a post such as this, i can continue to eat my dinner with my left hand. This not only spares the keys of my shiny new laptop, it is how i most love to eat asparagus: with my fingers.
Thats right: asparagus! At its most simplest, it is perfect barely cooked, slicked with olive oil and lemon, coarse salt scattered. Sometimes i might add chopped olives, or a grating of sharp cheese preferably goat or sheep, maybe some herbage the likes of parsely/mint/chervil, but i usually like to leave that special veg as unadorned as possible--besides, the more you add to them, the more you may require a fork.

Tonight almost required a fork. I got a little saucy, braising some of last seasons preserved tomatos in wine to coat the spears. But my left hand was still up to the task of one at a time, finger licking asparagus eating. And while i may not be able to write, shape a ball of dough into a bun, or even whisk effectively with my non-dominant hand, im not completely useless on the left. That said, i am more open in the hips on my left side, and get closer to the splits with my left leg forward--just a random bit of a yoga thought to close a random bit of a post.


ps this "bit of" a post took over an hour to write: there is only so much one finger can do, and the tastiness of something green and springy and local but not frozen from last season was so wonderfully preoccuppying (also not really a word, but understandably grammatically correct if it were) that my right hand could not help but join my left in delivering dinner.

No comments:

Post a Comment