When you don't have a father, a grandmother can be just as effective.

She didn't 'cripple me for life'
except according to the retrospective
evaluation of her kind.
I think that she empowered me at an early age
to be a happy, solitary drifter
by whacking my left hand when I used it
'inappropriately', and by sending me
to a nursery school where a co-conspirator
did the same - but with a ruler's edge.

And so I stammered, was farouche, had tantrums,
and tended to resist 'authority'
(which is usually just authoritarianism).
In my slow dissociation from social norms and expectations
these grim women were the thin end of the wedge.

I wear a watch on my right wrist
but cannot write with my right hand.