​So many jobs that teenagers used to get hired to do in The Olden Days—without a hint of irony, this is how my daughter refers to my wanton youth—have vanished.  
 
At least in our sweet beach town, I’ve never seen an actual bicycle riding paperboy.  It appears that this rise-at-dawn, you’ll-get-a-ton-of-exercise task is now being done by middle aged adults in sensible vans, probably because they’re struggling to make ends meet since living wages are becoming as rare as an affordable house.  The same seems to be true for pulling weeds and pushing lawnmowers.  And thanks to automation, I also haven’t noticed any teen pinsetters in any bowling alleys I’ve visited in the last decade.      
 
Still, there was one young person gig I couldn’t imagine ever going away. 
 
That was the pizza delivery guy (or gal).
 
Usually a local high school senior or a community college student, usually driving an okay car still able to toot its way around the hood, the hours are flexible, and the tips make it a pretty good deal.  In fact, delivering pies was one of the first jobs a neighbor’s son scored, and he liked it okay.  During one four-hour shift, he told me he’d once pocketed $92. 
 
But now, Domino’s—the second largest pizza business in the United States, its annual gross sales are $8 billion—wants to take even this job away. 
 
Yup, as I write this, the cheesy pepperoni giant is in the midst of a six week experiment—delivering pizzas without drivers to customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of its corporate headquarters.
 
Here’s how it works.
 
For selected pizza lovers, their round meal arrives in a special gussied up Ford Fusion equipped with radar and a camera, but no one gets out of the car. (For now, a Ford engineer is behind the wheel, but the front windows are blacked out to guarantee zero interaction.)  When their pizza is ready, customers must instead leave their couches and TV remotes behind, go out the door, and meet the car at curbside.
 
Once at the special black and white car, they next type a four-digit code into an exterior car keypad.  After that’s done, a magic rear window opens and allows customers to pick up their order from a specially-heated compartment.  Customers are chosen randomly, and receive a phone call if they want to participate.  If they decide to try it out, they’ll then get a text letting them know the car is about to pull up. 
 
There’s more: in the years ahead, not even a four-wheeled vehicle may be needed. That’s because the company is also testing delivery using—wait for it—drones.  
 
These kind of no-humans-involved transactions seem pretty odd to this Girl Clown.
 
Then I remember that the future has always included leaving jobs behind.
 
Indeed, a quick Google search of once important jobs that are now obsolete—and yikes, some were around when I was well into adulthood—yielded more than a few examples.
 
There was the lector, a person hired to read out loud to cigar makers while the latter did their repetitive work.  Paid via the pooled wages of the workers, he would sit in a chair on a raised platform so that most of the laborers could hear him read whatever requests were offered up to him.  And if you’ve seen any movies about the old timey newspaper business, you’ll for sure have seen someone playing a copy boy—essentially, an errand runner in charge of delivering news and press releases to reporters and editors on deadline, usually ripped from clattering wire news services machines.  
 
Other non-existent jobs of yesterday include lamplighters, persons who manually lit the gas lamps that used to line
city streets, and ice men, who delivered blocks of ice to homes with ice boxes (also known as the first refrigerators).  
There were also Dictaphone operators, most often secretaries who would transcribe memos and letters that had
been dictated into a machine by her boss.  About the size of a bulky shoe box, it was a device, in fact, that I had
to master in the mid-1980s.
 
And while we’re at it, let’s get into the iPhone.
 
Seemingly single handedly, these can’t-leave-home-without-it devices haven’t just replaced switchboard operators.  They’ve also superseded folks who used to manufacture and sell alarm clocks, timers, flashlights, calculators, photo albums, address books, day planners, video cameras, maps and a lot more stuff that I can’t think of right now.  Sooner than later, I’m expecting a Zippo lighter, fly swatter and luxe Swiss army knife to be part of the package, too.  
 
But it’s not all that bleak.
 
That’s because for every job that isn’t around anymore, another and often better job slides into its place.
 
So, if the Dominos experiment works, there could potentially be tens of thousands of test vehicles on the road, and that will take more designers and engineers, not to mention state-of-the-art mechanics, radar and camera technicians who need to be on hand to service all of those cars.
 
And while there aren’t any more lectors, there are certainly a lot of stand-up comedians doing their shtick out loud at clubs (whose owners hire managers, food preparers, bouncers, servers, busboys and bartenders) around the world.  
 
Moving on to the extinct copy boy, the Internet has instead exploded with all sorts of jobs that have everything to do with writing, editing and managing news sites, blogs and other information driven web site addresses.  And there are some well-paying careers that are completely brand new, such as those in renewable energy; advanced robotics, and all manner of computer coding, support and development. (The latter could be exactly where today’s teenager might be happiest anyway.)  
 
It’s a brave and sometimes scary new world out there, for sure. 
 
There’s one more thing.
 
I want to take part in at least some of this—because once I stop learning, I’ll stop living.
 
Have you, or a friend or family member, ever had a job that’s now obsolete?  I look forward to your comments
​and stories!  

(Note:  Given that millions of kids are starting school this month, I thought this would be a timely topic for my first September post.)
  
Once upon a time, we were feared and reviled.
 
Yet out of the entire population of the world—7.5 billion and counting—there are still 900 million of us out here. 
And while it seems that the latter number is a pretty hefty one, it’s really just 12 percent of the populace. 
 
However, we also aren’t going away anytime soon.  In fact, our numbers are growing.
 
Yup, I’m left-handed.
 
In other words, I’m also known as a southpaw and lefty; other names we’ve been called are clumsy, awkward and even perverse. And let’s not forget the festive phrase “left-handed compliment,” which means taking pleasure in what otherwise is a mistake. 
 
Luckily, I was well into adulthood when I discovered that not so long ago—and still around in some places today—being left-handed was thought to be an affliction.
 
My own, positive memory is crystal clear. 
 
I am almost five years old, and rays of sunlight are pouring into our first grade classroom from the solid wall of windows, yes, to my left.  Miss Kelly has handed out those chunky yellow pencils, perfect for tiny hands and fingers.  We also have one sheet of butcher-thin paper on our desks, the kind with broken blue lines to indicate where to draw
the alphabet.
 
“Pick up your pencil in the hand that feels most comfortable to you,” says Miss Kelly. 
 
I’m in the back and don’t think twice; it just feels easy and good to use my left hand. When I look up a few minutes later, I’m surprised that everyone around me is writing with their right hand.  Silently, I think, “Oh, that’s interesting,” but that’s about all.  (Still, in our very right-hand world, I long ago learned to use this “other” hand for many tasks, including ironing clothes, using a computer mouse and scrubbing floors.)   
 
But others, including my father and The Hubster, had very different experiences. 
 
My right-handed dad—born in 1919—curled his hand into a painful looking, claw-like “C” shape whenever he had to write anything down.  When I asked my mother why he held his hand the way he did, she said that he had been forced as a child to do so.  There were no other details. 
 
As for my music educator husband, his mother and her four sisters were all left-handed and he was, too.  But at the Catholic elementary school he attended in the 1950s, writing this way was considered—and he was told this, flat out—evil.  That said, he says that not only has he learned to live with the adjustment forced on him, he has benefitted from
it.  “I found it quite easy,” he says, “to learn to play many musical instruments that require small motor skills from
both hands.”  
 
But the blame shouldn’t fall completely on those long-ago teachers and nuns. 
 
After all, they were only ascribing to all of the folklore and superstitions about the awfulness of being left-handed—tales, it turns out, that have been around for thousands of years. 
 
For instance, the forever landlord of Hell—the Devil—has long been portrayed, both in stories and pictures, as being left-handed.  As a matter of fact, it was said that he baptized followers with his left hand.  Indeed, in France, witches there greeted the Prince of Darkness with their left hand. 
 
Superstitions include the belief that if your right palm itches, you’ll receive money.  But beware if your left palm needs to be scratched, because then you’ll be giving money away.  Some also believe that it’s bad luck to pass a drink to another person with your left hand. 
 
And when it comes to the tradition of wearing one’s wedding ring on our left ring finger, there’s a reason for that, too.  It seems that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that wearing the marital band in this spot fended off the evils associated with the left hand.           
 
I sort of see where these beliefs may have started.
 
Because, what do you know, there are several studies that show that we lefties are prone to learning disabilities that the rest of the population doesn’t share.
 
One, conducted in Australia in 2009, concluded that left-handed children performed worse than right-handers when it came to vocabulary, reading, writing, social development, and gross and fine motor skills.  More recently, in 2013, a Yale investigation boasted scarier statistics: its research claimed that we are at a much greater risk for ADHD, mood disorders and dyslexia.  Here, scientists also found that a full 40 percent of patients with schizophrenia, or similar brain disorders, wrote with their left hands.  Others swear that those with autism tend to favor their left.     
 
On the other hand (pun intended), a whole lot of Very Cool People are left-handed.
 
There’s Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Oprah Winfrey, Seth Rogan and Jon Stewart.   Surprising to me, a disproportionate number of our Presidents have also been left handed; we’ve had eight in the White House, including George H. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (for the record, Donald Trump is not).  And, I also think our numbers are increasing—from four percent in 1920 to 12 percent today—not because there are really more of us.  Rather, my theory is that it has more to do with the fact that those born writing with this hand are pretty much no longer being forced to make a change.  
 
One more thing.
 
I’m honored to be on this list.   Heck, I’ve always been a little quirky (although I would hope, especially for friends
and family, that it’s in the best sort of way), and being a southpaw—excuse another pun here—fits right into my
Girl Clown narrative. 
 
Just as snugly as a left-handed baseball mitt.   
 
What are your thoughts about left handedness and left-handed people?  I look forward to your stories and comments!
 
P.S.  Yes, it’s true: we lefties even have our very own yearly holiday.  Find out more, at
http://www.lefthandersday.com/.