Cross-laterality

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/@darshan394

I write with my right hand but fight southpaw.

The left side of my body is stronger, yet I tend to lead with my right.

Per the Miles test, I am left-eye dominant, and my optometrist has prescribed a higher strength contact lens for my right eye. (Though eye dominance hasn’t shown researchers any clear correlation with handedness, so I have company.)

As a child, teachers called my parents in concern over my creepy mirror writing, which my mother solved by putting a star sticker in the top-left corner of each page as a cue for where writing should start.

I tend to the ridiculously clumsy, which may offshoot from my body’s clear confusion about which side is dominant.

Is this normal?

I hadn’t clustered these facts into a list until I took the Miles test after reading a New York Times article about eye dominance and handedness. Over time, I’ve unconsciously parceled out activities toward different sides through some unknown logic. I don’t recall teachers or parents pushing me one way or the other in my youth.

Given this mix of preferences, am I a thwarted lefty? Ambidextrous? Something else?

Off to the library (also, these days, known as “Bing.”) Turns out the condition appears frequently enough to achieve documentation through definition as “mixed or cross laterality.” However, every dictionary and guidebook record many traits that no one would call normal. (And anyway, normal can prove painfully boring.)

What’s your laterality?