Comment by dspillett

I do many things in what is considered the right-handed way, but others the left way. I do a bit or martial arts (badly, but I enjoy it) and there are some things that work better for me the left-handed way there too. For a few things I'm just as good with either hand.

I think I was destined to be ambidextrous (well, ambiUNdextrous!) as I used to write the left side of the page with my left and switch over, and you'd be hard-pressed to spot where the change had happened. If teachers encouraged me to pick a side, the quality of my writing dropped on the other side of the page. I only started to favour the right when my eyes started going “properly funny” (I have a couple of faults there which interact in interesting ways) which meant to be comfortable I tended to turn what I was writing on clockwise (which made writing with the left much less comfortable/practical).

> I was a very awkward and uncoordinated kid

Same. And no different as an adult! (even worse now I get recurring vertigo…)

In my case I think it is largely due to my eyes though: my assumption being that because the faults with them changed a lot at the same time I was developing & growing generally, my body/brain were a bit hindered wrt working out the hand-eye coordination and general proprioception businesses.

One interesting note is that mix-handedness is more common than you might think, and it can confer an advantage in some sports and other areas just as full ambidextrousness can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance