Wed Jan 17 16:55:57 2024 UTC by CrazyPaya234
On an alt because my brother knows about my main, and I don't want this attention to come towards my parents and make it to my grandparents [somehow]
I never had a relationship with my grandparents from either side of my family. On my father's side, they died before I was born, and on my mother's I barely ever saw them. And when I did, it seemed as though they had no intensions of speaking or interacting with me. I was at home for the longer weekend because my parents needed help cleaning out the attic, and in one of the old boxes there was a old picture of my grandmother and my mom when she was younger. The picture got me thinking about why my mother's grandparents always had acted so strange around me, as if they were avoiding me entirely. I brought the subject up to my mother while we were cleaning up the attic, and she told me why. She told me that my grandparents had always been hyper-religious, specifically catholic. This came as no surprise as I had deduced such from various mannerisms they had shown in the little time I had meet them. She finally said that the reason my grandparents didn't want to be around me was because I was left handed.
WHAT.
She explained further that the left-hand had been interpreted as the devil's hand as a catholic superstition. Because of this, my grandparents had always been wary of me, which grew out to them avoiding having a relationship with me entirely. I'm at a loss for words as to how these insane traditions continue to be prevalent in religious circles, especially in older individuals. It saddens me that despite how Christians often claim to be a welcoming community to all people, that many exclusive and elitist traditions continue to be practiced. I hope as time goes on, we open our eyes to realize how absolutely batshit insane these traditions, and maybe religions as a whole, really are.
This might be the wrong community to say this in but...
As far as I can tell it has never been official catholic dogma to persecute left-handed children. It's just not a thing.
Now Catholicism does come with a baggage of superstitions inherited from ancient Rome, including the whole "sinistra" thing. However while I strongly believe organized religion is the roots of many evils, this is hardly one of them. Your grandparents were just complete nutjobs. I've heard several stories of "gram-gram was freaked-out when I started showing left-hand dominance" (from people who are now 40+ because this superstition had died off before the war) but they always ended with gram-gram getting over herself.
My ex can write with both hands because her parents wouldn't let her be left handed. I can tell you she's significantly younger than you're thinking. She was also catholic
My mom is left handed, was raised catholic, and if I remember correctly my grandpa had to tell a teacher to fuck off who wanted her to learn to write with her right hand.
I'm not disagreeing that the superstition exists, but anyone who was still preventing children from being left-handed after WWII was either old or a fucking moron. Now maybe there's some correlation between religiousness and susceptibility to superstition (/s) but I think that's where the catholic church's involvement ends. There's enough terrible things to blame them for, no need to make stuff up.
Well, it was common for schools back in the early-mid 1900s to force lefties to write with their right hands. Not just Catholic specifically, my grandmother's public school forced her to write right-handed.
But I can say that no one in the family was ex-communicated for being a lefty, and if they were, it was prior to the 1900s. You're right, OP's grandparents are just crazy unless OP was born in the 1920s or something.
It was still happening in the late 1980s. That's why I have bad penmanship with both hands.