Self checkout has gotten better. Back in the day they didn’t work for crap. But it’s still often a matter of luck of the draw and whether or not there is a god somewhere that decides to piss on your parade that day.

In the immortal words of Dirty Harry, “Do ya feel lucky punk? Well, do ya?”

Oh come on, there’s got to be a dollar general somewhere at the end of your driveway.

For those that don’t know, Dollar General is an infestation of a chain store. They are almost ubiquitous in small rural towns. They can act as an old time general store selling everything from candy, to clothes, simple household goods, and milk and a few other more shelf stable groceries. And it’s all of less quality than a temu steak. They are also ineradicably poor employers. With low pay, no benefits, and worse staffing.

Thank god for that!

My adopted sister, was a freckled face fiery redhead when she was a kid. But when she got into high school, she suddenly stopped being a redhead and announced to all and sundry that she would forthwith be Auburn. And Auburn she has been ever since. She still has the freckles though.

Handedness is considered genetic these days. Being a leftie or ambi can be considered a genetic fault also. Since we are the definite minority. We just ain’t normal in the head.

And it’s thought that lefties are far more likely to show at least tendencies to being ambi than righties also. Though no one is very sure just how much is due to just genetics vs needing to learn to live and survive in a predominately right hand world. And they claim even the most die hard ambi person has at least a slightly favored hand.

While I claim to be a leftie, I can, like you write with both hands and some other tasks equally from both sides. Though I still prefer the left. But I can’t hit a baseball from the right side of the plate. Even though I prefer to throw right. I suspect that many ambi people are just lefties that are more willing to swing both ways.

****It been a long time since I went down this particular rabbit hole. I would not be surprised if I misremembered something or knowledge has advanced.

It’s not about pushing the pen being harder, it’s not. But rather that writing as a leftie, you fight 2 things. First, your hand covers everything you write and you can’t see it. Plus you smear the ink/lead as your hand drags across it. And secondly, since in the western world we write going left to right, your arm needs to move across your body and gets blocked.

Playing a piano is an ambidextrous instrument. And is great for building two hand co-ordination.

Living the leftie life makes for much confusion. I write and bowl left handed. I throw a baseball right handed and bat left. I shoot a basketball left handed. And throw and kick a football right. I play guitar, fiddle, banjo and bass right handed.

Us lefties are far more adaptable than plain old righties.

I have always grabbed Grandma’s butt with my left hand. And she still likes it after all these years. 😜

Yes, yes we are. You know what the ultimate evil is? Being a left handed Scorpio. I was left with no choice - being left handed and born on Halloween. I am what the gods and fates made me to be. (Insert Evil Laugh^tm here)

Ned being shown as right handed while owning a store that caters exclusively to left handed people, is the joke within the joke. It’s not that deep.

It shows Ned has a bit of shrewd business sense because he knows that lefties will more than willing to pay a premium to get left handed items. For example, I was willing to double the price to buy left handed scissors because it sucks to use “normal” right handed ones. Evidently, cutting stainless steel shim stock is hard on them and you can only resharpen them so many times. So I paid a lot of extra money to have a tool that I could comfortably use.

Yep. I am proud member of the Bar Sinister. And yes, Ricky Bobby I will put that evil on you because of it.

You need to be on top of your game at all times when you are a member of the Bar Sinister.

They do it because it looks cool. And their playing suffers because if it.

Late 1900s is better than mid 1900s…

I had a Great Uncle that was a lefty and he was forced to write with his right hand. He had the most beautiful cursive penmanship you ever saw. So flowing and elegant. It was perfect. I can’t imagine his struggle to be that good.

Both my parents were lefties also, (what are those odds?). And I was the only one of the us 4 kids to be so afflicted. And in the early 1960s when I learned to write, I drove my teachers to the brink of madness being a lefty. I was constantly admonished to keep my paper properly vertical and not turned 90 degrees. And my letters never had the correct slant to them, in cursive the letters need to slant forward just a bit. Mine tended to slant backwards. I also often got lower marks on my papers because of my left handed penmanship. And to be fair, my penmanship is still poor to this day. Writing in the western world is not made for us members of the Bar Sinister.

As far as Ned owning the Leftorum and being right handed, that is the joke within the joke.

There is a surprising amount of “ancient” hardware out there still chugging along doing very useful work.

They were Amazon long before your mommy and daddy were born. Do you think Bezos had an original idea? Amazon will be as impressive as Sears if they last as long.

3.5 floppy disks. They still exist and still get used. I used them regularly up through the 2010s.

Be gone! Foul Spirit! Take your Co-Pilot and leave this innocent place.

Remember, you don’t need to engage. You get pulled in because you want to be pulled in.