# 14 Left hander? (first published - 10/26/20)

 The other day I posted an old picture on a Facebook Group Page.  The Facebook Group is of the San Fernando Valley in the 1950s and 1960s.   The picture,  my Sixth Grade class photo.   

I got a comment about the class photo stating that they were in that same class and that most people in the picture went on to the same Junior High School and High School as did I.  I commented back about how Sixth Grade was very tough for me as I had changed schools, left behind by best friends,  and had a bad stutter.  They comment back that they did not remember the stutter but then accurately pointed to which of the thirty student pictures was me.  Then a few minutes later, commented again that I was a left-hander.  

The little known fact about me is that I am a left-hander when it comes to baseball and bowling but a right-hander for golf and writing.  I guess I  was born left-handed but like so many children in my day was forced to write right-handed.  I am still pretty ambidextrous.  

But still, how does one remember someone from sixty years ago as being left-handed but not remember the stutter?  Was my stutter not as obvious as I think?  Or did I remain totally silent in sixth grade?   Or was the person who commented just being nice?  Or, was being a left-handed baseball player more rememberable than my stuttering?

Sixth Grade was not my favorite.  I still remember the friends for every year of elementary school other than sixth grade.   I really can not remember anyone in the class including those that went on with me to junior and senior high school.  I recognize some names but have no recollections of any of them.  I did have lots of junior and high school friends but seems that none were from my sixth-grade class.  

I have gone to one, and only one, high school reunion.  It was my twenty-year reunion at the St Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles.  At that reunion, someone walked up to me to apologize for a fight I had in sixth grade over a bike.  He apologized for hitting me and said he had lived with it all those years.  To be honest, I do not remember him hitting or hurting me; I do remember some incident over a bike that caused a fight that brought me and my parents into the Principles office and that was bad enough.  I also remember fainting and falling from the top bleacher while singing during the evening holiday show.  And I remember dance lessons at Chase Street Park across from the school.  There I sort of learned to waltz and do the cha-cha though Susan will tell you, not to well.  Sometimes many years later, someone told me how much they enjoyed the dance lessons with me but today I do not remember who it was.  To be honest I do not remember if the dance lessons were while I was in Sixth Grade of later in Junior High.  My other recollection from this time is my secular Hebrew language classes after school twice a week at Van Nuys City Hall but I do not think it involved any of my sixth grade classmates. I'll save that story for another time.

So I go back to the "I was a left-hander" comment.  Is our own memories different from others who know us?  I looked the person who commented up in my high school yearbook.  He was one of the star baseball players.  Maybe how I played baseball was much more important to him than anything else about me.  Whatever the reason he remembered that fact, it sure stirred of memories about that period of my life.

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