New Southern Dad: A right-handed guitar becomes a good investment

An old belief says that left-handed people are more creative than their more populous right-handed counterparts. 

I doubt that that school of thought is actually true just based on the statistics alone. I know very few lefties at all, let alone creative ones. I consider myself a pretty imaginative southpaw, but that hasn’t made life necessarily easier in our right-hander’s world. 

Growing up there was a gang of five boys – my brother, cousins and myself – together as often as we could be. Whether rampaging through the woods, felling small trees to build forts or playing ball in the abandoned garden spot (we often played with a tennis ball so we could pretend to be heavy, home run hitters), my left-handedness was often a handicap, especially in sports. 

Having a older brother and cousin meant using hand-me-down equipment, right-handed equipment. I learned to play baseball, and golf, right-handed. Maybe that’s why I never showed much aptitude in such endeavors. Not that I’ve ever been much of a sports guy anyway. I’m too afraid of the ball to ever have been a Major Leaguer, and golf, though this opinion could change when I’m in a different stage of life, takes too much time and money.

As I got older, however, I became more inclined to learn how to play a guitar. What kind of guitars were readily available? The right-handed kind. So I borrowed one from my brother and started practicing. At the time, left-handed guitars were more expensive and were not available in many popular makes and models, so I opted to continue playing right-handed. 

So every stringed instrument I have ever owned, I played backwards. Naturally backwards per my perspective anyway. 

For some time I’ve had a bass guitar, right-handed of course, purchased on the cheap from a discount music store when I was a teenager. I had my eyes on another prize at the time (I was already dating my future wife) so the instrument saw little use. The guitar has spent most of its life zipped in an equally cheap carry case, tucked away in a closet wherever I’ve happened to call home at the time. 

Until now. 

My son expressed interest in learning the bass guitar. Lucky for you, I told him, I have one begging to be unpacked and put to use. And put it to use he has. The other day came home to walls rattling, deep note reverberating from his bedroom. He’s still getting the hang of it, earning callouses on his fingers. He says it hurts, and I tell him that nothing worth doing ever comes easy. 

But this might come easier for him than his old man, because lucky for him … he is right-handed.