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2007. The boy who sits next to me at International Relations is left-handed, and I am not. There are days when he comes to class late, and so his usual place to my left is occupied by an unfamiliar right-handed female; this is all fine and dandy, except this means Lefty takes the unoccupied seat to my right. When this happens, there are pages in my notebook where random sentences fly out of the page as a result of hour-long sessions of accidental elbow-bumping with Lefty. “Sorry,” we mutter to each other when violent limb contact occurs. We resume note-taking without skipping a beat. Two minutes later, our elbows collide again when frenzied dictation hits fever pitch. “Sorry,” we mutter mutedly, and we resume note-taking without skipping a beat.

2002. M is such a gifted, gifted artist. She produces pieces of art that leave me crestfallen about my own artistic capabilities, and it looks as if she is about to do it again. We sit down for an art class to finish up oil paintings we had started on earlier that week. I pick up an emaciated tube of paint and try to wrest the blasted thing open, but it has been crusted shut after years of unuse. I try to open it with my left hand, and only end up cutting myself. Confound it all! I make another effort to open it with my right hand, but it slips and I elbow M in her good painting arm—that is, her left arm. “Aiyah!” she yelps. I see a fresh streak of green paint run across her piece. The girl knows better than to sit on my right in Algebra, let alone Art. I guess we all forget sometimes.

1998. The temperature of Jakarta at high noon is comparable to Dante’s description of hell in The Inferno. But Indonesia just walked away victorious with the Thomas Cup, and in the wake of patriotic fervor, all of us youngsters are eager to follow in the footsteps of our hero-athletes. The basketballs and volleyballs at recess have been replaced with a proliferation of badminton rackets and shuttlecocks. P and I are teamed up in a heated doubles badminton match against our rivals, and we have match point. The witches on the other side of the net serve. We both scramble to return what was supposed an easy final point, but somehow our rackets tangle in mid-air as we helplessly watch the shuttlecock flutter to the ground. We would have won that game faster if she were not a leftie, or if I were not some graceless right-handed person borne of common physiological stock.

My Sinistral Classmate
Posted on May 2nd, 2007