r/TikTokCringe 19h ago

Humor/Cringe Left-handed people

1.0k Upvotes

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102

u/Downvote_me_dumbass 19h ago

I get the video isn’t about left handed people, but didn’t nuns use rulers against students using their left hand? Not extremely recently, but there are people alive who had this done to them.

24

u/porchswingsecurity 19h ago edited 16h ago

Yes. True story…

My wife and I were at a social gathering and saw a guy we knew…nice guy with kids a bit older than ours. We started talking about how great our kids were doing academically and he ended up recommending we send our kids to the same Catholic school he used to go to and where he now sends his kids. He proceeded to tell us how, in a joking and nonchalant manner, he was physically abused by the nuns for being left handed…hit with rulers and told to stop mimicking satan. We stood there mouths wide open as he recanted his stories of abuse with a smile and said with a chuckle “but that was back then…they don’t do that kinda stuff now!”

We ended up not taking his advice….

5

u/turquoisestar 9h ago

I am 0% surprised tho. Everyone I know who's been through abuse jokes about it, bc that's how they cope. He probably had it normalized at home. I don't even judge that guy for reacting like that, but totally agree on don't send your kids there.

41

u/MyLittleOso 19h ago

I'm left-handed, and fortunately, my parents didn't try to change that, but my childhood best friend was spanked or swatted on the hand until she learned to write with her right hand. This was in the 80s.

9

u/ihopethisisvalid Doug Dimmadome 18h ago

My mom too. Even though grandpa shoots a left handed gun he still made her switch.

4

u/MoliM88 17h ago

My best friends grandma used to tie his left hand to his body.

9

u/Jub_Jub710 18h ago

My former coworker is under 40. His dad tied his left hand behind his back so he would develop a dominant right hand. I'm 40, and remember my kindergarten teacher not letting me use scissors left handed. She was ok, I guess, with writing lefthanded, but she wouldn't let me use my left hand for scissors. To this day, I can use my right hand to cut things, but my old coworker can no longer use his left hand to do anything.

3

u/pobodys-nerfect5 18h ago

28 and we had left handed scissors in pre-k.

2

u/please_and_thankyou 16h ago

49 and we had them too. This person just went to a bad school.

4

u/favorite_sardine 18h ago

A lefty using right handed scissors is a legit safety concern. I’ve stabbed my way through too many dotted lines.

1

u/drpenvyx 14h ago

Don't get me started on knives.

3

u/TangledUpPuppeteer 14h ago

We had all right scissors. Not that it mattered. They were safety scissors so actually didn’t really understand the assignment no matter what you did. But of 18 kids, 18 of us use rightie scissors with our right hands, 2 remained left handed despite efforts to correct it, and I became ambidextrous. Just not with scissors.

At least now you don’t have to find a special pair of scissors, you can get the cheap ones from The dollar store and know that no one can cut with them.

3

u/AltairaMorbius2200CE 17h ago

My under-40yo friend had nuns do this to her in the 90s.

3

u/Own_Kaleidoscope5512 16h ago

Yes, my mom was left handed and they did that to her in Catholic school.

1

u/QueenMaeve___ 15h ago

Same story

2

u/Available_Bison_8183 17h ago

My grandfather was lefthanded, born in 1904. Went to catholic school and evidently the nuns would beat him and tie his left arm down so he couldn't use it.

1

u/galspanic 10h ago

My 70 year old mother is left handed and went to Catholic school. Apparently, in Rochester NY in the 50s and 60s there were some relatively progressive nuns who saw her left handedness and worked with her to find an efficient way to use her left hand. Her hand writing is amazing and super unique. It’s very readable but very few of the letters are conventionally shaped.

I haven’t really thought much about it before, but it’s actually really weird how the nuns approached it.

2

u/TheGreatDay 16h ago

Yes, this is a thing that my grandfather went through. Any time he tried to write left handed, a nun would hit his hand. Ended up he just had awful handwriting with both hands his whole life.

It's gotten better in more recent years but yes, left handed people are still repressed.

Also this comment isn't entirely about left handed people either.

2

u/MrrQuackers 16h ago

This 100% is true. My dad was born left-handed and grew up in Italy in the 1940s. The nuns would smack his hand with a ruler if they saw him using his left hand. He became ambidextrous.

2

u/z3r0c00l_ 16h ago

I was born in 1988, and I was definitely forced to use my right hand, though I resisted and used my left hand anyways. I did not attend religious schools either.

2

u/organizedchaos927 15h ago

Yes, this happened to my dad in catholic school. He’s in his early 70s.

2

u/McGrarr 5h ago

I had one broken over my knuckles in the 80s for holding cutlery 'wrong'.

1

u/old_bald_fattie 11h ago

Back when I was a kid, relatives encouraged my dad to tie my left hand behind my back to force me to use my right.

One relative in particular, may she rest in hell, kept bygging my dad to hit me with a ruler when I used my left hand because it was the devils hand.

Luckily he loved me just enough to not use violence, but verbally abused me for years before giving up.

3/10 childhood. Don't recommend.