Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Self-taught
Several times a day, complete strangers criticize me for something I can’t help. If I conformed to their idea of “normal” behavior, I would be in pain for most of my work day. Not right away, perhaps, but after an hour or two? You betcha.
Here’s a sampling of the remarks I hear all the time.
Did you injure yourself?
You look like a caveman.
If you had gone to my grade school, the nuns would have murdered you.
I bet you’d be a better surgeon if you [did it the right way].
and the most common question,
Who taught you how to do that?
To which I reply in my most obnoxious voice, challenging the questioner to give me even an ounce more of their shit: I’m self-taught.
Follow me below the cut to see WTF they’re griping about.
That question again:
Who taught you how to write like that?
I am so tired of these questions . . . No, not the questions, but the tone of the questioners. What they’re really asking is, What’s wrong with you?
Over the years, my responses have become progressively more snide. I used to answer truthfully. If I hold my pen like the rest of you, my hand cramps up within an hour or two. When I was little, it was the only way I could get a grip on those fat blue lumberjack pencils. And, yes, the teachers nagged, but I ignored them, and eventually they gave up.
Nowadays, as I mentioned above, I usually snap back at them: Self-taught! It shuts ’em up. They don’t know quite how to respond. And if the questioner is with a school-age child, I tell the kid how it will drive his teachers and parents absolutely batty if he holds his pencil like I do.
“When they complain,” I say, “just tell them that’s how your doctor holds his pen!”
If the parent has been particularly obnoxious, I’ll give the kid my pen and say, “Here, try it. It works a whole lot better than the way your teachers taught you.”
Yes, I’ve made a few converts.
I’m not the only one who holds his pen this way. There are a few others. The few, the proud. I remember when I first met another person who held her pen like I hold mine. She was a checker at Pier One Imports in Mountain View, and when I saw her grip, a shiver went down my spine. I’m not kidding. It was like I had found a long lost sister. I was in my mid-20s, and I had never met or heard of anyone like me.
But the best encounter came later, during residency. We were taught ear surgery by the faculty of the House Ear Clinic, one of the best otology groups in the United States, if not the world. These guys are all top notch — well, except for the one who blocked me from getting a job offer at HEC post-residency. Him I can do without. But the rest? Gentlemen and scholars to a man.
And one of them held his pen just like I do. What a feeling of vindication!
Maybe you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but when you’re a short, hairy, Jewish kid who repeatedly effs up the curve on exams, the last thing you need is another readily visible feature to set you apart from the crowd. So when I hear my patient tell his wife, “Hey Ethel, get a load of how he holds his pen,” I think of my attending from House Ear Clinic and I smirk. If it’s good enough for one of the nation’s top ear surgeons, it’s good enough for me.
D.
I may have to try that, considering I have intermittent teno-synovitis of the thumb tendons in my right thumb. Anything to make life less painful.
I would say it’s like your pen is a tongue sticking out through your fist – like a new way to say “Fuck you!” but I can also see the “Me grab pen and make marks, Ug!” line of thought too.
My Aunt is left handed and will write over the top of her page with her hand painfully crooked so she’s actually writing upsidedown – but she has the most beautiful penmanship I’ve ever seen – just painful to watch.
I’m a lefty, I know a lot of leftys, and there have been several who hold their pen like that to avoid ‘curl around syndrome’. One was an incredible artist, so you’re solidly in good company.
I hold my pen the ‘traditional’ way, only I pull instead of push so that my hand isn’t twisted around like most lefties. Most people don’t even realize I’m left handed until they notice me writing ‘normal’ only with the opposite hand, then they’re “You’re a LEFTY? When did this happen?” “Oh, when I was maybe 2.” 😉 I have aunts and uncles who are lefties and they taught me to write LONG before any teacher got ahold of me and messed me up.
Which they tried to do. Until my mother threatened to stuff them into the unemployment line. Mom was awesome when I was in grade school!
oops! That’s ‘push’ instead of ‘pull’.
It’s early in the morning. 😉
Isn’t it funny how these little things haunt us? Be proud of your difference!
Anyway, no matter how you hold your pen, your handwriting’s got to be better than mine… ;o)
tambo: I never really noticed, but I push instead of pull too. Lefties unite! The southpaw shall rise for the very first time!
I think we need a flag, or something.
Doug: I’ve seen someone who held her pen that way. It struck me as a little odd, but then I thought, Well, I’m a lefty. What do I know from odd?
one of my best friends holds her pencil like that, and i hold mine weird two–sort of like the traditional way, except with my middle finger below my first, at the bottom of the pencil/pen. but i’ve seen even crazier ones–this girl i went to elementary school with held hers with three fingers spread out on the main part of the pencil and the pinky on the paper…
i don’t get why teachers try to teach us any different–whatever works and makes the neatest handwriting for the individual kid should be encouraged, no?
I tried it, but I’m not as talented as you. It comes out scribbles, so there is obviously a technique that must be mastered.
🙂
As an ambidexterous dyslexic, I had a terrible time learning which hand to hold the pencil with, which side of the paper to start from, and which way the letters were supposed to face.
As your sister, I felt it my duty to finally try and hold a pen YOUR WAY. Of course I’m way too old to change, and holding the pen that way now just screws up my beautiful handwriting, but those hideous fat pencils were a detriment to children, and you just found a way to deal with it. I thoroughly enjoyed this post.
This post blew me away because you are cute, smart, and funny. The caveman remark is freakish. Those people need to have their eyes and retinas check ASAP. After that, run an MRI. Nuns would murder everyone given a choice so that’s not saying much. Those people are f’ed up if they went to a school with penguins. As far as the handwriting method, I tried it and my handwriting is legible with your method where normally it is not. I need to convert but your method is slower so I will probably maintain with speed and illegibility.
And I thought I got crap for having 3 fingers on the pencil instead of the approved 2. (hold pencil the “right” way, then stick your middle finger on top of the pencil next to your index finger, and that’s how I do it.)
My left-handed sons have the tips of all their fingers on the pencil, though sometimes the pinky slips off.
The husband and the girl write the right way.
I’ve got the best penmanship of all of us, though. :-p
nox: Try it. For what it’s worth, a physical therapist once told me that my method IS superior, because it puts the stress on the hand’s larger muscles. She explained it better than that, but I didn’t understand her.
Lyvvie, you gave me a great idea. Next time someone questions me, I’ll rotate my hand so that the pen juts upward and say, “What, like this?”
tam, I don’t recall my parents running interference like that. I had to survive on stubbornness.
DN, my handwriting is quite legible, especially when compared to other doctors’ writing.
Pat, there are a few of us out there. About two or three times a year, a patient will tell me about a family member or friend who holds his pen that way. And I’ve met a few more over the years, too.
shaina, YES. Why can’t teachers focus on the important things?
True story: my son (another small-handed individual) holds his pen differently, too. Imagine closing your fist on the pen such that the pen pokes out through the bottom, below the pinkie (not between two fingers).
His 2nd grade teacher was giving him grief about it. When we met her for open house, she felt it necessary to speak to us. Whereupon I whipped out my pen and said, “I keep trying to get him to hold it MY way, but the kid is stubborn.” No one ever peeped about it after that.
Sam, it’s like anything else . . . it’s whatever you’re used to.
Sis, thanks for trying 🙂
CD, it’s amazing how obnoxious people are around novel differences. When my wife was younger (and even now, I think), the sight of a young woman with a cane provoked endless comments. “Did you injure yourself? Did you just have surgery? What’s the matter with your leg?” Maddening.
Darla,
thanks for giving me my morning SCREAM. 😉
How do you hold your fork?
Who says I use a fork?
Same way, I think. As for scalpel work, I hold it the “proper” way for skin incisions, since this does give me slightly better fine control. When I’m using other pen-shaped instruments (Freer or Cottle elevators, to be precise), I revert to “my” way because I need some strength behind the instrument.
OMG! I do the same thing. We are like, totally, twins now or something.
I was the bane of my teachers’ existence, they tried and tried to get me to hold my pencil the ‘right’ way and I resisted until they gave up.
Although, no one gives me shit about it as an adult like they do you. Maybe because my hands are smaller?
M
Hm. I never realized that was supposed to be weird. I hold my pencil like that too, only I cushion the end of the pencil closer to the top edge of my fingernail. Now I know I’m going to be watching the way everyone holds their pencil from now on. *lol*
I, too, hold pens/pencils oddly–but in a different way. I also have terrible handwriting. Coincidence? (I’m physically incapable of holding pens the “right” way. Just can’t do it.)
Michelle, that is too weird. I never expected any of my readers to hold her pen that way. Same to you, Cora (and welcome to the blog!)
Jim, now you have to post a picture, too.
I can’t write in cursive. Always hated it in school, so when I got to college, I typed or printed everything. Nowadays, I doubt I could remember how to write anything in cursive (except for my name).
My ex-husband holds a pen the same as you. The tip of his right middle finger was severed in a bicycle chain when he was a child and when it was reattached it was never quite right. That finger is a bit shorter than it should be. When he tries to hold a pen the “normal” way the part of the middle finger the pen should rest on just isn’t there. It took me two years to figure out why he did that, lol.
I never learned to write – we moved when I was a kid, from a school where we were still printing, to a school where everyone was writing – so I made it up as I went along. Basically, I printed without lifting the pen off the page. Needless to say, my handwriting is abysmal, although I do hold my pen in the prescribed manner.
I tried holding it your way, and it’s doable – I can see that it would be more comfortable for doing a lot of writing – although I’d need to practice a bit. The weird thing is that when I write your way, my writing looks exactly like my father’s.
I’ve always assumed that I hold my pen “like a leftie” because I copied the way my sister (a leftie) does.
Okay, wait a minute. There’s a “right” way to hold a pen?
What is it?
It’s amazing to me that at 33, this is just now coming to my attention. My way is almost certainly ‘wrong,’ being left handed and all. Luckily for me, my teachers were disinterested enough in my writing style that they left me alone.
When my dad, also a leftie, was in school [a long, long time ago], they tried to ‘convert’ him to right-handed-ness. He ended up with a stuttering problem and a lot of chewed up collars because he was so freaking nervous.
He’s still left-handed [go figure] and does the hand upside down thing. That always looked uncomfortable as hell, so it was avoided by me.
My way of holding a pen is similar to yours, except that my fingertips are on the pen instead of the pads of my fingers.
I never dreamed I would hear so many accounts of alternate writing techniques. Maybe those folks who hold their pens the “right” way are in the minority. Yeah. I bet that’s it! And they feel threatened — yeah!
*sigh*
I just had to respond to this….my daughter (14) holds her pen/pencil exactly the same way- in har right hand. Many teachers and relatives have tried to force her to change, she refuses. She’s a 4.0 student and writes (and draws) nicely, so her dad and I have chosen to ignore it- if it isn’t causing a problem, it isn’t a problem….
We only have your word that your penmanship is legible – I request a sample.
We are a mixed house; Sassy and I are right handed, Husband and Shorty are left handed. To accommodate each other, Husband and I are almost completely ambidextrous. I learned to write with my left after breaking my arm, he’s just had to learn to live in a right handed society. We believe whatever gets the kids working is good.