The Right Hand…

There is something I must say, and I must say it with a heavy heart: it is a dark day for this city, a dark day for our great state and a dark, dark day for this, our glorious country.
In Athens our fine athletes are doing us proud, running, jumping, swimming, riding and throwing things around like I always wished I could. And, as an election looms, our leaders are “on the trail”, doing their utmost to better our nation. Everywhere, men and women who call Australia home are out there working there fingers and noses to a bloody pulp to better our land, and just when it seems things couldn’t go any better for place of green and gold, tragedy strikes.
Tragedy struck, as I’m sure you have now heard, in the form of an advertisement in the Newcastle Herald (14/8/04, pg76). This is what it said:

“HELLBAR OPERATIVE”
If you are well presented,
motivated, right handed
and are interested in lear-
ning shoe repairs, key cut-
ting and engraving.,
Please reply to the
Manager, PO Box 486
Mayfield 2304.

I truly could not believe my eyes. And when the situation had fully dawned on me, I could no longer see the ad, because my eyes grown so full of tears.

In this day and age, there are still people out there who think that a person is not truly entitled to his (or her) full rights unless he (or she) is right handed.
Like a disgusting feral rabbit eating away at the carrot of Australian society IS handedness discrimination.
Now me, I’m thick skinned, I can take a bit of a knock, but what about little Left-Handed Johnney who looks up at his mum with big brown eyes and says, “When I grow up, I want to be a HELLBAR OPERATOR”. And his mum has to go down on one knee and look him in the eye and dash his hopes and dreams to the ground because of the bigotry of our society.
It is my hope, that if you are well presented, motivated, right handed, and interested in that position, you would not apply because you would rather scrounge through eel infested desert, and eat scraps, poo and glace cherries before you would work in a place that was handednessist.

And if you did choose to reply to the Manager, I hope that you would do so with your left hand, perhaps as you drove past his shop, and show him that Australia is not the place for such single-minded thinking.

As Abraham Lincoln once said* “He who writes with his left, is left with his rights.”

*While Lincoln MAY have said this at some point, it is vastly more likely that it is a complete lie and he never actually said anything of the sort. You be the judge. I’m Tom of SGR.