Wed Jan 17 16:55:57 2024 UTC by CrazyPaya234

On an alt because my brother knows about my main, and I don’t want this attention to come towards my parents and make it to my grandparents [somehow]

I never had a relationship with my grandparents from either side of my family. On my father’s side, they died before I was born, and on my mother’s I barely ever saw them. And when I did, it seemed as though they had no intensions of speaking or interacting with me. I was at home for the longer weekend because my parents needed help cleaning out the attic, and in one of the old boxes there was a old picture of my grandmother and my mom when she was younger. The picture got me thinking about why my mother’s grandparents always had acted so strange around me, as if they were avoiding me entirely. I brought the subject up to my mother while we were cleaning up the attic, and she told me why. She told me that my grandparents had always been hyper-religious, specifically catholic. This came as no surprise as I had deduced such from various mannerisms they had shown in the little time I had meet them. She finally said that the reason my grandparents didn’t want to be around me was because I was left handed.

WHAT.

She explained further that the left-hand had been interpreted as the devil’s hand as a catholic superstition. Because of this, my grandparents had always been wary of me, which grew out to them avoiding having a relationship with me entirely. I’m at a loss for words as to how these insane traditions continue to be prevalent in religious circles, especially in older individuals. It saddens me that despite how Christians often claim to be a welcoming community to all people, that many exclusive and elitist traditions continue to be practiced. I hope as time goes on, we open our eyes to realize how absolutely batshit insane these traditions, and maybe religions as a whole, really are.

  • Simulation6
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    10 months ago

    This used to be a thing even if you were not a religious nutjob. I lot of babies were forced to use their right hands if they showed any left handed tendencies.

    • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      My great grandma grew up during the depression and was forced into right-handedness at public school. They had those desks that are basically just seats with a little handrest big enough for your books on one side. They didn’t have any left-handed ones, so she had to learn right-handed.

      I think she dropped out in the fourth grade, so she was never a terrific writer. But she was pretty ambidextrous which came in handy a couple times when she broke her hand.

    • Weirdfish@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I was pushed to write right handed, and then broke my right arm as a kid.

      Wrote left handed for a while, then broke that one and went back to right.

      To this day I have terrible penmanship with both, but am a programmer who types like machine gun fire so who cares.

      Still a lot of little things I do left handed, put in contacts, ride goofy foot, etc.