Vast right-hand conspiracy

I'm trying, with some success, to learn to write with my left hand. It's difficult; I won't lie to you. And that is difficult to say, because, through no fault of my own, I'm male. We men have a bad track record of admitting we're having trouble doing something ("No, I'm not lost; I know where we're going," "No, don't call the plumber, it's just a little leak," "No, I can make the baby myself.")\nBut that's not the point. There's nothing wrong with my right hand. I can still write with it, and by no means am I implying I do it legibly. If I apply a pencil to a piece of paper though, I have a high success rate of forming words. \nThe point is I have always wondered why I'm right-handed. \nI began by calling a professor in the Department of Everything I've Done from Womb to Graduation Documented in Photographs -- my mom. According to her, as an infant, I originally did things with my left hand. Through some coaxing, I ended up right-handed.\nA good story, indeed, but still a scientific explanation would have been nice.\nFor that I turned to M.K. Holder, who is not only the director of the internationally renowned Handedness Research Institute here at IU, but whose name also includes the word "hold." \nAs a hard-hitting journalist who asks the tough questions, I wasted no time before I fired away: What's the deal?\n"There is a hereditary component of handedness," Holder said, "but it is not via a simple dominant and recessive gene, so geneticists are still debating the exact process." \nIt doesn't stop there though. Handedness, much like daylight-savings time or getting a guy to admit he's wrong, is complicated stuff. \nSadly it's still common for children to be forced into using a certain hand due to biases that can be traced to ideas regarding social conformity, cleanliness and religious customs (all of which, I was assured, are dumb reasons).\n"What adults who try to influence handedness don't understand is that it's biological, and a child cannot perform his best using his less-skilled hand," Holder said.\nThe social conformity, I think, is the issue. Like any issue involving "fitting in" or "the norm," a society promoting conformity promotes stagnation. It's not whether we should make sure children are right-handed to have an easier time; it's whether we are responsible enough to have a society a person of either hand will perform well in. \n I don't know anyone who's seriously tried to learn to use their other hand for the sake of fun. I would, however, encourage anyone to try. All it takes is practice and repetition to refine the writing. I've chosen to hand-write the U.S. Constitution for practice because it's an important document and this will give me time to learn it.\n I know you are thinking: "They say going to college should be about exploring and experimenting, but you're hand-writing the Constitution with the opposite hand. That's just weird, man."\nSo I asked Holder, who is also a psychology professor at IU, if I were crazy. Luckily, she went easy on me: "They're your hands, it's your life."\nAnd I'll need all the reassuring words and practice I can get. After all, it is the Constitution, and I think I just wrote "We the purple