It took me a while to get used to everyone having their (non-eating) hands in their laps (US) vs. on the table (Yurp).
Aren’t all our cultural differences wonderful?
I have that same quasi-ambidexterity. Have no idea where it came from, but it’s quite strong. Mostly it’s doing things like writing or things that require fine motor skills with my right hand, but stuff requiring strength (like opening bottles or jars, throwing, … also dealing cards and bowling — not that I’ve bowled in half a century—-) I do left handed. I just go with the flow, although I’ve long given up on the American custom of switching the fork hand after cutting meat on a plate. Faster time from plate to cavernous, hungry maw…
I was never forced into right-handedness. There are a lot of lefties in my fam. Maybe I’m just genetically short-circuited.
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That rule applies in many cultures. I remember reading Madura Jeffrey’s early book and being fascinated that she said that proper manners meant you couldn’t let the food go past the first knuckle.
Yep, especially if you know about them beforehand. 
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That’s so cool! A fellow weirdo like me, although we are almost exact opposites 
Some fine motor skills like handwriting or dealing cards (to take your examples) I do with my left hand (although if you saw my handwriting these days you’d think I’m a rightie: that’s how bad it is ). But I’m more adept at closing bracelet clasps with my right hand, which is usually reserved for meatier tasks like punching, throwing, opening jars, and… wiping (found out the hard way when I threw out my back and couldn’t turn that way 
).
I was never forced into right-handedness either, so I’m just a natural born weirdo. I’m good with that.
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Twins from different parents: Alternative Universe…
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imagining i’m a US born anomaly because i eat quite a bit of my food with my hands, but i knife and fork (when available) most pizza.
This is very true.
I speak several languages, and I know my persona, attitude and even demeanor are different for each.
I think I even write with a different persona.
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Not to get sidetracked, but I think eating with hands is quite sensual.
Knife and fork? So sterile by comparison.
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“Sensual” is an “exoticizing” a very quotidien cultural practice 
If you grew up eating with your fingers, many “sensual” things are trained out of you as “uncouth” — for eg, licking fingers clean at the table is not polite (and your fingers shouldn’t need to be licked clean anyway, only your fingertips should have been engaged).
Ok there. Now we can get this thread shut down as soon as someone goes from there to elsewhere
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That’s a North Indian perspective.
In the south, the entire hand — palm and all — might be engaged as a cup for soupy things.
Very skillfully.
(I do not have such skill. In fact my hand doesn’t even turn completely for my cupped palm to be able to reach my mouth properly. I was trained the other way, fingertips only, only one hand — don’t you dare be lazy and anchor that bread with the other hand, teaspoon for very wet things that are being eaten solo — yogurt, mango pulp, kheer, etc etc).
Oh, another vagary I never thought of till it frustrated the $&@ out of one of my nephews — eating hand fingers always hover above the plate in between bites. Till he learned this, we would go through a box of tissues per meal because he needed to clean his fingers off between bites
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I would say it’s much more satisfying to eat with hands.
On the topic of sensual, in the thread that @Saregama linked, there was someone who mentioned a quote attributed to the Shah of Iran, along the lines of ‘eating with cutlery is akin to making love wearing armour’ - I think that is quite a good observation!
and then there is the whole food serving temp thingie when eating with your hands.
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Thank you for the explanation.
I will admit to having once, many decades ago, eaten pickled herring out of a jar with my fingers, but …
My jar.
My apartment.
No other humans in attendance.
(although my snacking was interrupted by a phone call).
This may actually be a necessary thing depending on who you’re making love to …
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I’ve seen pureed Western soups served in little shot glasses at cocktail parties, which I like. Things like gazpacho, vichysoisse and Borscht.
I often drink Western soups and broths from a mug at home, if they aren’t too chunky.
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I think to put bow on this topic for me, and to give you my own thoughts on this, as someone who like yourself that does not feel comfortable with using utensils or cutlery, I would simply embrace that aspect of your culinary persona.
Let it be known (like you have here) in your own social circles that you are, as you say, “sloppy” and “lack dexterity” and I would venture that 9 out of 10 people would be more than willing to accept you for who you are and should you want, provide you guidance on how to use the so-called “weapons of culinary consumption” that they find essential to a meal so that everyone can enjoy a meal together.
And for that 1 person who is so myopic that they either refuse to acknowledge the quiddity of your culinary persona or who simply refuse to be open and accommodating, then it’s their loss.
There are more than enough people to go around in the world who you can hang out with without feeling awkward.
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Loved this line.
I think people are creatures of habit, and what’s habitual seems “right” and what is different or “other” seems unacceptable. Here (in the West, I’m in the U.S.) we’ve had table etiquette rammed down our throats.
In India, as you mentioned, you were warned against requesting/using cutlery because that’s “other”, there, so unacceptable or being snobbish as you were told.
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Some of the responses in this thread reminds me of the time about 25 years ago I had had enough of my father-in-law. Mrs. ricepad and her mother went on a week-long trip, and MIL thought it’d be ‘helpful’ if FIL stayed with the two spawns and me during that week. FIL has no domestic abilities at all, and may be the originator of weaponized incompetence: the man cannot even make instant coffee and is actually proud of the fact that he has never changed a diaper, so how she thought he’d be helpful to me in taking care of two young kids is incomprehensible. In truth, she probably knew that, left on his own, he’d have been helpless and may have burned their house down, and if he stayed with me at least he’d be fed and housed, so for the week he ate what I made and generally kept out of the way.
On the second or third night, however, he made a comment that infuriated me. I had prepared something Chinese, and had set the table with chopsticks for the spawns and myself, and a fork, knife, and spoon for him. As we started to eat, he blithely wondered why the Chinese, for all their genius and inventiveness, still insisted on using chopsticks instead of the more civilized knives and forks.
He’s not a stupid man. He has multiple advanced degrees from respected institutions, and was, before he retired, considered a leader in his engineering field. Yet he was - and still is - so blinded by his white privilege that he can’t understand that different can be just that: different. Not better. Not worse. Just different. I told him he’d insulted everybody who lived in our house, and if he said another word that evening I’d ask him to leave. He was smart enough to remain quiet.
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That’s an infuriating level of willful disregard.
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