Do you Smoke Right handed or Left handed?

[mso489]

I think pipe smoking requires some ambidextrous skill, though I hold the match in my right hand, my pipe in either depending on which corner of my mouth I'm smoking out of. Tamping I do with either hand, but mostly right. When I was in junior high (middle school) I broke my right wrist doing an acrobatic teeter board stunt; I was the skinny kid who was the projectile. Everything went fine until I was six feet in the air where the plan ended. Anyway, I had to learn to write in a rough way with my left hand, and I have shifted off to lefty now and then ever since. I still remember my orthopedist, Dr. Wasniac, with plaster all over his dress shoes from doing casts, who snapped my wrist bone back in place, intense pain but very sort, at Luther General Hospital.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I think pipe smoking requires some ambidextrous skill

Not just you, Tom, but to all of the ones calling holding the pipe in a non-dominate hand, ambidextrous HA HA HA.
I don't think that anything I would be doing with my pipe could equate writing or painting. Come on guys. I am very right hand dominant, but I can still light my lighter with my left hand, or at the very least hold my pipe with my left hand. Like are you guys so hand dominant that you have to walk around with the useless limb in your pocket all day? WTF?!! Ha ha. Can't you at least open a drawer or turn a doorknob with your non-dominant hands?

I mean, I can tamp with my non-dominant hand. It's not quite the same thing as signing a check.

You guys are cracking me up!!

 

[crashthegrey]

This bring to mind how awkward it is when you are in a slow smoking contest that says that you can only tamp while the pipe is in your clench. I don't understand why some contests do that, but it is the most unnatural way to tamp ever.
Thankfully most of these contests use an aromatic, so that keeps me uninterested to try them again. no prize is worth having to suffer through a bowl of 1Q, IMO.

This rule is so ember chasers don't look and roll a single ember around to extend their time. Levels the playing field.

 

[crashthegrey]

It's funny, I was just having this conversation in Richmond as regards lighters. I am right handed, smoke on the right, and use my right hand with the pipe. But when I light, I switch to my left hand and use the lighter in my right hand. But I have found that Kiribi, Corona, and all the fancy lighters are designed to be lit with the left hand based on the angle of the flame coming out and the alignment of the striker. So I can never justify the cost of a Kiribi that I love so much when I have to awkwardly flip it around when I use it.

 

[timelord]

I'm left handed, invariably smoke on the left, usually hold the pipe in right hand and light with the left but sometimes the other way around.

As far as ambidextrous skills go I think being able to switch hands for holding a pipe or lighter or tamper counts as very basic

When I used to play cricket I would usually bat left handed but occasionally swap hands - mainly to p-off the opposition who would then have to reset fielders... - I'd bowl with my left hand but oddly when fielding I would normally throw the ball with my right hand.

For racket sports (mainly squash and badminton) I was pretty much truly ambidextrous swapping the racket from hand to hand as needed.

My handwriting is illegible when I write with my left hand; it's 10x worse if I use my right hand.

 

[olkofri]

I don't clinch: if I want bent pipes I buy them already so.

Now, as for clenching, I don't either, and do it all right handed. I only move the pipe over to the left when I get chafing on the right side.

 

[SmokeClouds]

Clenching on the right side of the mouth and holding the pipe with my left hand mostly. This helps while doing other things while smoking as I am naturally right handed.

 

[philobeddoe]

I dress to the right.

 

[bullet08]

Both side of the mouth can be used for clenching, and both hands can be used as needed. No specific preference. Train it this way from the start.

 

[stogie37]

Pretty much exclusively a left hand holder. Only clinch briefly to free up both hands. Right hand dominant - but as a touring drummer for many years I can play independent time signatures in each hand without much effort. I’ll be darned if I’ve ever tried lighting a bic with the left tho! Now THAT is intimidating ?

 

[jhowell]

Yes.

 

[FurCoat]

Same as @ashdigger. I'm a left handed.

 

[cfreud]

I clench on the left side of my mouth while being right-handed. Come to think of it, My father and my grandfather clenched on the left side as well.

 

[Dudditz]

I mostly sit down, relax, and don't clench.
I use both hands, but predominantly the left since I tamp and light with my right hand.

That...?

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I hold the pipe in whatever hand the cat is not attacking.

 

[mso489]

A lot of professional athletes can work with either arm/hand, like Derek Jeter, as an example. I think many people who get selected for pilot training in the military also have a remarkable adaptivity in tasking their right and left side, and a superior sense of balance, and of knowing which way is down. I guess if you are aware of consciously "trying" to do exacting work with the non-dominant hand, even if you do it successfully, you probably aren't talented in that way, like I'm not. You have to do some of that when you use tools, drive, or dance for that matter. But the scale of aptitude is pretty wide. Some lefties in the old days, like the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were trained to use their right hands as dominant, which was quite a struggle, and much to their credit, and may have challenged their emotional development along the way. I bet there are studies on this; if they were written with any coherence, they'd be interesting to read.

 

[Bobby Bailey]

I generally start out right handed, but switch back and forth on a bowl. After a bit on one side the flavor dulls, then I switch to the other until the flavor dulls again.

 

[solideogloria86]

I'm ambidextrous. I am right handed with 90% of the things I do. Hammers and tools, pistol, bow, fighting, carving, fishing, etc, right handed. Eating, writing, rifles, left handed. I always smoke my pipe out of the left side of my mouth. Just doesn't feel right, on the right side, clenched or otherwise.

 

[AroEnglish]

Right handed but left mouthed. It could be how my teeth are or because I took a baseball to the right side of my face and don’t use that side of my mouth much anymore.

 

[sablebrush52]

Left sided for the most part. Left handed for the most part.