Did you ever notice that . . .

Did you ever notice that . . . you can tell if a person is left handed or right handed by the way that they clap?  Try it out at dinner tonight.  Ask your dinner mates to start clapping and notice which hand is active and which hand is passive (your passive hand “receives” the clap).  Now encourage them to clap the other way, that is, try making your non-dominant hand the active one.  Feels strange, no?

Some folks, of course, are “neutral clappers” (both hands meeting in the middle), but they’re a rare breed. So the next time you’re at a concert, or a play, take a peek at how people clap – you’ll be able to immediately tell if they’re lefty or righty (my wife Roe, by the way, is ambilevous: “having the ability to perform manual skill tasks with both hands”).

Did you ever notice that . . . when families are walking, the man walks ahead of the pack, while the mother trails the field?  Why is that?

I suppose it’s linked to DNA. After all, back in the day, it made sense to have the hunter-gatherer out in front – protecting the family, finding the next meal. But today, what’s the thinking?  I remember a field trip some years ago that my wife organized – an overnighter with 150 fifth graders accompanied by 25 chaperones (three of whom were male). No big surprise that one of the men (walking out ahead) lost track of one of his kids. 

So I wonder: do we still need to be out in front?

Did you ever notice that . . . in conversation, some people perpetually use pronouns instead of first names? (e.g., or “My wife and I are heading to Florida” instead of “Roe and I are heading to Florida”).

Granted, if we are meeting each other for the first time, and I don’t know your sister’s name, a pronoun makes perfect sense. But over time, I’d think that people would make the switch. Yet many don’t.  Why is that? Why do people – long after they know us, and they know that we know all the players – continue to use pronouns? Perhaps it says something about our personality, or, more simply, is just a verbal habit that mimics our parent’s conversational style. Either way, I must admit, it’s a mystery to me (as it happens, early in a relationship, I’ll make a point of introducing family members with both pronoun and first name (“my sister Ilene”), and then, as the conversation evolves, I’ll switch to the name alone. But I may be the odd one here).

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