Obama the sinister?

A lefty.

No, not his politics.

Like me, Mr. Obama is one of those 10 percent of people who were born and are irrevocably left-handed. So was Ronald Reagan, proving left-handedness transcends politics.

We lefties write in one of two ways. Either, like the President, by positioning the hand so as not to rub the pinkie side across wet ink or smudgy pencil. Or, we write by pushing the instrument ahead of our hand. That's my way, and when writing with soft pencil I put up with a blackened hand.

According to a list kept at Indiana University, Presidents Garfield, Hoover, Truman, Ford, Bush 41 and Clinton are or were left-handed. So were both of President Kennedy's kids.

Also The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, and Jack-the-Ripper.

For me, the toughest thing about being a lefty is that, even now, in my mid-50s, I have to think for a split second before deciding which way is left and which is right. I still regularly get it wrong. My wife will say, "Turn left...no, the other left."

Scissors are a problem. Good scissors' handles and blades are oriented so that a lefty using a regular pair finds his or her thumb jammed across the edge of the loop. And they can't see the line they are cutting on. Decades ago my mother bought me a pair of shiny chrome left-handed scissors that I still treasure. I can't imagine that President Obama will need scissors very often, but that would be a great gift to him from his chief of staff.

Some kitchen essentials such as peelers tend to be right-handed, although two-sided, "neutral" peelers, and left-oriented serrated knives and fish forks are widely available. To be honest, a lot of left-handed products are just gimmicks.

As you grow up you adapt.

Besides, who uses a fish fork anymore? Come to think of it, at a State Dinner in the White House, the menu and proper etiquette might just require a fish fork. Will Acting Chief of Protocol Gladys Boluda, or whoever decides these things, make sure the President has a fork he won't embarrass himself with?

Computer mice are notoriously right-handed, and I've learned to live with that. At one job, I used the mouse software in Windows to reverse my symmetrical mouse. Left click became right, and vice versa. It used to drive our network administrator crazy when he had to access my machine. In my home office, I use a wireless Logitec mouse. It is curved beautifully to fit the right hand. Maybe it's my life-long piano playing that has given my right hand pretty good dexterity in some contexts, so that I am fine with a righty mouse.

But writing, eating by hand or utensil, shaving and other hygienic tasks, holding a microphone or telephone, using hand tools, playing any sort of sport or game that requires an implement or use of a ball - I'm a pure lefty. I paddle my canoe mostly on the left.

Over the years, researchers have pondered lefties and the pressure some older ones were subjected to as children to switch. I had early teachers who advocated forcing a switch to right-handedness. Luckily my parents rejected that notion. In historical times, left-handedness was considered as something wrong. It was associated with evil. The word "sinister" comes from the Latin sinistro, for on the left side.

As late as the 1980s some bogus researchers "proved" lefties die sooner than everyone else. We lefties chuckled to ourselves and ignored those findings. They were eventually debunked.

So, here's a raised glass - in the left hand, of course - to the new left-handed president.

You're in good company.

Footnote: Are you diligent about installing the updates that Microsoft sends to your computer? I am. Recently an update to Office 2004 for the Mac, which I use, arrived and I downloaded it. I noticed that Word now recognizes the words "Barack" and "Obama" are correct spellings. No more jagged, red underlining.

Tom Temin is one of the co-hosts of The Federal Drive and consultant with 25 years of experience in journalism, specializing in technology and government. For 15 years he was editor in chief of Government Computer News. He tends to paddle in clockwise circles when kayaking. Reach him at ttemin@federalnewsradio.com.