Do you know different?

Funny how sometimes, it turns out that things you thought that "everybody knew" everybody doesn't know. The other day, at a family meal, one of the grandkids asked why men wear their poppy on the left, whereas some women wear it on the right. And I was surprised that this produced silence at the table and it was left to me to come up with the (probable) answer - one that I thought "everybody knew". So, traditionally garments with buttons were made with the button on the right and the button-hole on the left - this being most convenient for right-handed people, which the majority of us are.  But then in the earlier part of the 19th century, posh "ladies" started to employ a maid to dress them, and these maids found it difficult to deal face to face with garments buttoning up right to left, so upper-class dress shops started to design women's blouses and coats which buttoned up the other way.  And of course in the way of these things, this quickly became the fashion, and everybody copied it.  The button-hole in the lapel also changed sides, and as this is where you wear your poppy or other memento, it was on the left for men, and on the right for women. That's how it was explained to me, anyway. These days it seems that many women choose which side to wear their poppy - some preferring the left.