Shacknasty is a corruption of a Modoc Indian name meaning Left-handed.
I'm shacknasty and have worked with an inordinate number of shacknasty surveyors through my career. Seems like the general population is about 10% shacknasty and from my experience the percentage of shacknasties in the surveyor population is greater.
This term was brought to my attention researching the Modoc chief Captain Jack (Kintpuash) and his 1873 battles against the US Army in southern Oregon/northern California called the Modoc War. Long story short, after besting the US Army, the Modocs got away. Some of the former Modoc leaders (Hooker Jim, Bogus Charlie, Steamboat Frank and... drumroll... Shacknasty Jim) turned themselves in and then hunted down Jack for the USA. Jack was hanged at Fort Klamath Oregon along with 3 other warriors.?ÿ
So us south-paws have the following words associated with our handedness:
Gauche. French. It means tactless or crude, but in the original French is means "left"
Sinister. Latin. Evil, the Latin word for left
Shacknasty. Corruption of Modoc word for left handed. Apparently Shacknasty Jim had two brothers, Jake and Shacknasty Frank. Guess which brother was a lefty.
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I handle a hockey stick left handed. Everything else is right handed.
I bat left, throw (and everything else) right.
Totally left handed but tried to golf right handed as a child with only right handed clubs available.
As a baby I carefully pondered between left and right. I decided that I ultimately did not want to die to a right hand pair of scissors, so right-handed I went.
I am left handed but have adapted to the right handed man's world.
I'm left handed. When I started my schooling in 69/70 and we were learning to write, being a leftee was taboo and they tried to train me to use my right hand. That didn't go well!!
Lefty here.
Wow! The numbers are adding up. I'm a righty - maybe that's why I never became a surveyor?
Righty
So Mt. Rushmore may not be representative in this regard. A little search finds that Jefferson was right-handed but adapted to writing with his left after an injury. Washington and Lincoln, were apparently righties, as was Teddy.
Hopelessly heft-landed here. Very dyslexic my whole life too.
Interesting tid-bit:
Back in the early '80s I was taking night courses at OSU. Sitting on a bench waiting for the classroom to empty for my class I enjoyed the company of a nice (hot) student teacher lady. She was in special-ed and taught a class of clinically diagnosed dyslexic elementary kids a couple of times a week.
We talked a lot about how I had managed over the years and really didn't even know what dyslexic meant until I was an adult. I also mentioned to her I thought my left-handedness was somehow intertwined with it all. She related that a few of the kids in her class were lefties and she wanted to check the others.
The next week I ran into her and she told me that over 80% of her class was left-handed. She was pretty sure we were onto something. I never saw her again, but I hope I gave her some insight on the whats-and-hows of jiggy-jammied in the head. 😉
Ambidextrous. Switch it up regularly. What’s kind of funny is my lefty handwriting is totally different than the right, wouldn’t know it’s the same person. Probably explains some personality disorders.
I'm right-handed, but wish we had a cool slang name like "shacknasty"! Worked with several lefty's in my career and all smeared the writing on the lath.
Righty. Some things are equal, such as operating a wrench or scoop shovel. One thing I never understood was arm wrestling with one of my left-handed buddies in high school. He would beat me every time right handed but I would beat him about 90 percent of the time left handed. Much later we learned that he had an ailment from birth where something near the top of his spine did not form correctly at birth. He underwent some sort of operation in his twenties but that did not fix the problem. He began to "whither on the vine" over the decades and died at about 50 due to this ailment. The correct term is about 30 letters long and is not spina bifida.
My youngest grandson tends to show a favoring for being left handed, but, it may simply be mirroring of watching others doing the same thing.
and they tried to train me to use my right hand
My dad, originally a south paw, started elementary school in 1923 and at that time they beat the left handedness out of him. Every time he tried to write or color he’d get slapped soundly on the left hand with a ruler to gently remind him to use his right hand. With stinging knuckles and through teared up eyes he came to realize the benefits of writing with his right hand but man his handwriting was horrible.
but wish we had a cool slang name like "shacknasty"!
I think the opposite of “Shacknasty” would be “Palaceprudish”. Not quite as cool, save for members of The House of Windsor.
I would be completely left-handed if not for the fact that my parents made me switch to my right hand for writing when I was very young
100% left handed.
My oldest and youngest are lefties. She writes with the pen clenched in her fist. My youngest helps me in the field and runs the gun. Because my back was bothering me the other day, I would let him set up and back sight, and then we would swap for stakeout, only trouble was the motion knobs are then on the "wrong" side of the gun for me.
