Southpaw

Southpaw is slang for left handed. If you aren’t into boxing, you may have never heard the term before. I hadn’t. Until one day, when I was writing in my journal at a cafe and a two nosy guys wandered by. They stopped, looked at me writing, and one said to the other, “look at the southpaw on that one!”

My father is also a southpaw.

He was raised strict Irish Catholic, in 1960s New Jersey, where he went to Catholic school. The nuns there were very strict. They believed my father’s left-handedness to be a sure sign of the devil himself. This meant he got beat with a ruler every time he picked up a pencil with his left hand.

But that didn’t stop him. He’s still a southpaw, like me.

As an artist, it’s something that I’m proud of. Even if it means I bump elbows with people at dinner, and basically the whole world, including school desks and scissors are designed against me.

It means, when I throw clay on the wheel, it spins the opposite way, clockwise, rather than counterclockwise for righties.

Around 10% of people in the world are left-handed.

Cheers to all you southpaws out there.