The Wrong Hand

When I was small, I remember hating arts and crafts time if we had to deal with scissors. The plastic grips pinched in all the wrong places. It hurt my hand to cut and cut and cut, feeling the grip cut-cut-cut back into my skin. Every construction paper hand turkey, every craft with stickered paper plates, it always hurt me. I was slower than the others during arts and crafts, mine fell apart because there wasn’t any time to glue. I wrenched my wrist too often trying to cut perfectly along the lines I’d drawn for myself. The lines were set so perfectly -- why was it that I couldn’t match my own design?

One cold Alaskan day, I remember my teacher sitting next to a six-year-old whose twin brown braids were nearly as long as she was. Mrs. Russel asked this tiny me, “Why are you always so angry during Art time? You love to draw, but you don’t enjoy any of our group projects.”

“I don’t like scissors. They always hurt me. We’re always using scissors.”

“Do you accidentally nip yourself?”

“No. They hurt my hands.” I lifted my hand to show her the reddened skin between my thumb and pointer finger, the angry rose of a callus forming from trying to struggle with these safety scissors.

She smiled at me in understanding. Mrs. Russel was an incredibly patient woman.

“Hannah, did you know we have scissors made for left handed people?”

Mrs. Russel walked to a small box in the arts and crafts cubby, and handed me a pair of blunt blue-handled scissors with a large L written in sharpie on the blades. She showed me how they fit, how the grip was meant for tiny fingers in the ‘opposite’ hand that everything else was made for. Where to find them, where to put them away when they were done, so others who needed these ‘special scissors’ could use them too. There were only three of them, laid next to the mountainous box of right-handed scissors.

My hands were different from the other students, and I just needed the correct tool for the job. Often times, the tools I needed were taken by the other left-handed students in the class, and I was forced to use the right-handed scissors. Why was it there were only three pairs, I wondered. It was a lesson in creativity, tools, and fair access.

Later during the year, we learned about Eric Carle, and his cut-paper children’s books. We learned how to cut better and faster. The paper could turn to our tool, instead of the tool having to move to fit the paper. You just had to use your other hand to guide the paper where you wanted it to go.

Magic!

I felt like a renaissance master, armed with scissors that finally fit my hand, demanding these craft supplies to bend to my whim. I could shape the paper, clear plastic, and card stock to my imagination. Then, it was cardboard at Christmas, a miniature architect designing cottages out of boxes. Some years after that, it was fabric. I created mythology with fabric and scissors, quilting unicorns into wall hangings and shaping night-sky clouds in cotton.

I was no longer afraid of any craft, rubbing painful holes in my skin was a thing of the past. I was a True Artist.

Nowadays, my craft is chainmail cosplay. While scissors cannot cut jump rings, they can cut the fabric backing for my projects. Blue velvet is no match for my prize fabric scissors!

Scissors were the first tool to teach me about accessibility, becoming a symbol for those who are a little different. All it took was one simple change to open a world for a small, owlish girl who hated anything related to Arts Time. When I am not working my craft, I work to make the world easier for those with disabilities, cutting through rules and laws that discriminate against them.

It all started with a simple pair of safety scissors.