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Blogger Random Question Challenge #2: Right-Hand Man


Hello, everyone. This is Arca, and this is my second-ever post for a Blogger "random question" challenge. To know what that is, and where I'm getting the questions from, you can read my previous post: http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/06/blogger-random-question-challenge-1.html 

Ah, I see. I got a good question that I actually picked to do on my first try clicking the "Save Profile" button. Here it is:

"Try writing your name with your other hand. Where was that person raised?"

I am a lefty, and proud of it. Lots of awesome, creative, and intelligent people (real and fictional) have been left-handed, from The Legend of Zelda's Link to Da Vinci to Bill Gates to Aristotle to Caesar to Einstein to Marie Curie to Jim Carrey and multiple U.S. Presidents... the list goes on and on. I even visited the world-famous Lefty Store, "Lefty's", on my visit to San Francisco, California five years ago. But, if I were to be born right-handed, like every single person in my family except for only one or two and the other around 90% of the global population, then how would my life go differently, specifically in where I would be raised? 


I took the above photo comparing me writing with my dominant hand, my left hand (on, surprise, the bottom-left part of the paper), and my non-dominant hand, my right hand, on the bottom right part of the paper. Honestly, I have to say, if I take my time and write at 0.25x speed to try to keep my grip as steady as possibly, I have to say that my right-hand writing isn't too bad from the last time I remember comparing the two, which was probably years ago. What I'm writing can still be clearly made out.

But Blogger, this particular "random question" is quite weird. I mean, all of them are meant to be ambiguous so that in interpreting them perhaps you reveal something about your writing style, personality, and/or outlook on life, but... is the "Arca Baran" I wrote with my right hand a person now? Or is it a reflection of who wrote it? I am going to go with the latter for this post. 

So, one possible answer: If we're talking location, then simply based on the handwriting, what location in the world was that person raised in? Well, judging by the fact that I have no idea how I'm even supposed to answer that question other than somehow comparing the way I wrote the letters to some real-world language's alphabet (spoiler alert, the letters are suspiciously similar to that of the Latin alphabet... hmmm), I'll skip this possibility and move on to the last, and final, possibility I am going to discuss.

If I were Arca Baran the "righty" (which I'm not... but is that even the alternate colloquial adjective for "right-handed"?), then were would I be raised? I thought about this for only about thirty seconds before I realized what the answer was: Istanbul, Turkey. Let me explain.

I was born in the state of New Jersey, here in the United States, and I currently still am a New Jersian. But it wasn't always this way. No, I'm not talking about that time 5 years ago when my family nearly moved to Texas. This was literally more than a decade plus a few years ago, in fact. After living in New Jersey for a year as an infant, my Turkish-born parents moved to Istanbul, Turkey to get a job there. However, this didn't last more than a year, at the end of which, we moved back to New Jersey and have stayed there ever since. Each and every member of my household, including my parents and Onur and I, have a dual-citizenship and passports as both American and Turkish citizens. 

Was I born a lefty? Well, left-handedness is actually a genetic trait (probably recessive of some kind... are you proud of me now, Mr. biology teacher?), so I would be, despite not ever gripping a pencil at or, let alone the standard way, yet. But would me being right-handed as an infant instead have any real impact on the decisions and actions of my parents, yet alone the Istanbul's or the Turkish job market at the time? It's hard to say, but logically, not really.

Then why would righty-Arca have been raised in Istanbul instead of New Jersey? Well, it could be possible due to the butterfly effect, like from that one thing I watched in 6th grade ELA (English Language Arts) class where some time traveller stepping on a blade of grass in the past changed the outcome of a future election. Or, it could be more precise than that. For every child that is born, their genetic traits are both controlled by certain things but also randomized and diverse. So, had the genetic "dice" had been rolled differently or whatever science explanation there is for that (I don't intend to study biology after 9th grade, so), then it's safe to say there's a chance some other things could have rolled differently as well. I could have been born a blonde, or green-eyed, or something else, or something (God-forbid) actually bad happens and I would have an inheritable disorder or disease of some kind that would require me to get treatment. This would directly influence my parent's decisions when I was an infant, thus, giving a chance of a chain of events to occur that would result in us choosing to live permanently in Turkey. 

So, to conclude, the person who is represented by me writing my name with my right hand rather than my dominant hand could have possibly been raised in an apartment building in the city of Istanbul. I hope that that doesn't sound too convoluted or a lapse in logic considering just how much of an explanation I've laid out for it with several facts and logical evidence. 

Well, this post was pretty fun, probably more fun that the previous one. I think I'm overall a bit prouder of this one, and it also makes me sound less insane as the topic is less bizarre (even if my conclusion, taken completely out-of-context, does sound strange). What do you guys think of this long essay, that all came from a single question, that I created in half an hour for fun (my typing speed is 100 WPM, please don't judge me)?  Think I should stop using so many parenthesis and long, comma-filled sentences? Yeah, me too. But I think with practice and revision I might get better at that. I hope you guys stay safe. Keep an eye out for my next daily post, hopefully tomorrow, which may or not be another random question writing prompt depending on my mood. This is Arca, signing off.


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