This is what you’re condemned to, when you’re left handed.

Consider:

Which hand do you use to turn on the water faucet?  In my case, this would be the left.

Now, sometime back in the 1950’s I think, a wonderful “stick-shift” technology was developed for use in water faucets, allowing the quite useful melding of hot and cold water at a variety of temperatures.  This is all well and good, but unfortunately, my quite classy apartment complex refuses to spend the extra money I was told it would take to replace the “hot” and “cold” faucets in my kitchen and bathroom with one of these cool stick-shift ones.  (This was after repeated leaking of these old-school side-by-side hot and cold faucets.  Perhaps the pre-1950’s technology had something to do with the leaks.)

By force of habit and handedness, I reach with my left hand to turn on the water any time I need it.  And that means I get about 4.2 seconds of water, increasing in temperature throughout, until such time as the water is too hot to be used for, say, brushing one’s teeth.  This means stopping down, crossing over my body, fiddling with the cold faucet until I can get just the right balance ...

Gah.

Now, there’s a very good chance that some of you are saying, “Hey, loser, after five years in the same apartment (yikes!), haven’t you figured it out yet?”  To which I reply, “No.”  I’m a lefty, and that’s all there is to it.

There is a simple solution to this problem.  And that is, of course, get a new place to live.  (Of course!)  One with faucets made some time in the later half of the 20th century.  Because let me tell you, this scalding water thing is no fun at all.

Links:

http://www.terrylove.com/faucets.htm

http://www.howstuffworks.com/water-heater.htm