New Puzzler, 5/5/97: Historical Roots of Anti-Leftism

RAY: Gee. OK, it's time for the puzzler.

TOM: Really?

RAY: I was reading something the other day where I discovered that Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed but wrote backwards. He wrote from the right side of the page to the left side of the page and he didn't write the way you would write, he wrote what was called mirror writing. He actually wrote backwards so you would need a mirror to read this. And I said, huh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder why he did that? And I remember when we were kids, well, no when I was a kid. When you were a kid in school they were still pressing reeds into clay tablets to write. Cuneiform writing. Remember that?

TOM:Stones and hammers.

RAY: But when I was a kid in school, every kid that was left-handed was forced -- those were the days when you could hit kids. You can't hit kids any more, but every kid that was left-handed was forced to write right-handed almost without exception.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: It's hardly ever done now.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Back then there was a very good reason for it.

TOM: A practical reason, not a psychological one.

RAY: Not a psychological one. There was a practical reason for it, which, for the most part, does not exist today. What was that reason?

TOM: Oh!

RAY: And if you think you know the answer, send it to --

TOM: I like this.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]