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.
It was extremely common up until about the 60s, so anyone born in that era may hold the same beliefs. My grandmother was forced into right handedness (in Jamaica).
I know a guy who was forced to write right-handed in school in Massachusetts. He's about 25 now. It's crazy to think that there's still people out there believing this stuff.
How so? It's not like they were smacking him with rulers or anything; they would just "correct" him if they saw him writing left-handed by grabbing his pencil and telling him to use his right hand.
In fact, he completely forgot about it until he broke his right arm snowboarding in high school. He thought, "At least I don't have to do any work with my arm in a cast!" And then a teacher told him to try writing with his left hand, and he discovered that he writes better with his left than his right.