Gawky (34 page)

“All environmental studies majors are required to spend a week tracking an animal of their choice. Everyone's doing deer but I'm gonna try and do rabbits to shake things up,” said Eli, really excited to be in his element.

I couldn't wait to tell all my former classmates back home about my new life and how I was going to be a dancer.

“My teacher, a former prima ballerina, thinks I have star potential,” I said. I chatted on about ballet, not noticing no one was listening, until Derek asked the far more important question, “Guys, how are we getting beer tonight?”

I didn't care. I was a long-stemmed beauty, and finally, being tall made sense to me. But as we drove aimlessly around the hometown we didn't really live in anymore but hadn't quite left, the carefree feeling of those last few months of high school was missing. Everyone was now too cool to engage in a buttercream fight or late-night Fudge Factory dance party. Plus, as we chatted about beer pong, keg-party hookups, and roommate drama, I thought I sensed tension between Adam and me. He didn't say much, so it was hard to tell what he was thinking. And I was banished to the backseat, a major step down from the permanent shotgun I used to enjoy in his Toyota Corolla. As everyone suggested different places we could go to spice up the night, Adam barely acknowledged my presence.

With no real plans for the evening, we decided to do the nerdiest thing possible and stop by the high school homecoming dance. I didn't really want to go to a high school dance (actually I didn't want to go to a high school dance during high school either, for that matter). The last high school dance I had gone to was prom, and a teacher almost got beat up over my fashion choices, and I'd long ago figured school dances just weren't for me. Besides, dancers didn't go to dances. We lived a dancer's lifestyle every day; why did we need to go to an organized function? I was sure that real singers never went to karaoke for the exact same reason. I didn't want to make the situation tenser by being disagreeable, though, so I just sat in the back left seat and waited while everyone argued as to whether or not this would be cool or totally lame. In order to move things along, I opened the door, hoping everyone would follow suit and get out. And just as I had one foot in and one foot out of the car, Adam made a rash decision that this dance was “gonna suck” and attempted to drive off, running over my left foot in the process. I screamed, and Adam reacted by stopping the car directly on my foot, which was now at an excruciating angle.

As that ton of car sat on top of my left foot, I couldn't help but think,
I don't think this guy wants to remain friends.

I screamed in pain, and the passengers in the overfilled Corolla yelled at Adam to “get the fuck off her foot.” I hoped this was all a dream. For years, my mother had told me my feet were too small for a girl my height and that was why I fell down so much.

“You tip over on those little hooves. They just aren't big enough to hold your frame. Did you bind them?”

I had always loved that one part of me was below-average size (aside from my boobs and my pinhead), but it appeared that they weren't small enough to avoid the treads of Adam's Corolla. As Adam finally moved the car off my foot, after what felt like an hour but was probably about twenty seconds, I looked down at my once-dainty body part and knew it was about to swell to the size of a ham hock.

I cried in pain as a carload of late teens panicked and yelled at each other, making everything worse. Adam was speechless. He had just damaged the most essential body part of an aspiring dancer. He had accidentally screwed with what enabled me to do the thing I had dumped him for.

Despite my screams for him to take me to the hospital, Adam thought it would be a better choice to drive me to our friend Samantha's house because her mom was a nurse. As if in her house she had an X-ray machine and Vicodin. He screeched into her driveway, made hasty and incomprehensible explanations to Samantha's mom, and sped away with the others, wiping off his proverbial prints in the process.

While Samantha's mom examined my foot, I felt obligated to explain the entire situation with a little more clarity. I told her that he had run over my foot but also that we had dated a few months at the end of high school and that maybe Adam would have been a little more sympathetic if I hadn't once used the phrase “I make art with my body now,” and I suggested that while this was certainly not an act done on purpose, it was an excellent fuck-you. Samantha's mom seemed to care less about the failed high school romance and more about my foot, which would now fit snugly into a clown shoe.

Eventually Samantha's mom did the sane thing and drove me to the emergency room. Somewhere along the way my father was called. The doctor told us my foot was sprained very badly, my tissue was all swollen, and there might be permanent bone damage. She also said I would have to sit out of dance class for a while, and when I got the cast off I could do moderate dancing but “absolutely no relevé.”

No relevé? How could I dance without ever rising up on my feet? How could I be a “long-stemmed beauty” if I only had one working foot?

A few hours later, my dad pushed me out the door of the hospital in a wheelchair, angrily clenching his teeth and muttering something about auto insurance. I cried silently, worrying that Adam's accident had ruined my chances of being a dancer, and on top of that caused my father's insurance premiums to go up.

If there was a shred of doubt about how Adam now felt about me, he made it even clearer the next day, which he spent not calling to see if I was okay. I ate my Thanksgiving vegetable side dishes (my mother still holding her ground on not making me a ‘special meal for a rude meatless diet') with my foot elevated and iced.

A few days later, I boarded the Short Line Bus on crutches, well stocked with unmalleable cold packs left over from my brown-bag school lunches. I wrote in my journal during the five-hour ride, trying my best to distract myself from the fact that I really had to pee. Using the world's smallest and smelliest bathroom was not appealing to me on two legs, let alone one.

I had left college for Thanksgiving break really thinking I was hot shit. Maybe I deserved to be taken down a notch. Gawky girls like me didn't have French boyfriends and aspiring careers as dancers. Girls like me date nerds with an edge and hobble around on crutches. Who was I to think that I could go from a disgraced weirdo wearing an orange unitard to a graceful artist who's heard of the Internet?

Jean Claude visited me the night I got back and was very kind to
me as I wept about the bone-crushing incident. Well aware that no man is attracted to a blubbering cripple, I tried repeatedly to hold it together, but nothing seemed to work. Turned off by my histrionics and possibly also by the giant plaster sock I was ordered to wear, he headed back to his room for the night without even bothering to sign my cast.

I returned to dance class the next day on crutches, making a grand entrance. The doors clanged as I swung them open and hobbled into the studio. I considered wearing dance attire anyway, but realized that would just make me more depressed. Besides, I didn't want to stretch out the spandex by forcing my dance attire over my plaster boot. Instead I opted for my newest chic look, a skirt over pants, over crutches. I know most women wear either a skirt or pants, not both at once, but I felt the double garment was a cool college thing to do. I had seen many other girls around campus rocking this look and I wanted in.

All the dancers stared at me as I clunked into the studio. Girls with neat buns and perfect posture stopped bending gracefully over bars to take a look at my megafall from grace.

“Margot, my dear! What happened?” my teacher asked, gliding over to me with such grace I wanted to applaud.

“Well,” I began, positioning myself at the center of the studio, looking out at the twenty or so taut-bodied girls in pink and black. “I used to date this guy in high school, briefly, and he was a nerd. But then he got into Brown and went totally wild and didn't care about school anymore, and so I found myself strangely attracted to him. No guys liked me in high school before because I was weird and artsy and really, really too tall too soon.”

The ballerinas all chuckled in solidarity. If I had been delivering this speech at the world-famous Apollo Theater, they would have been shouting things like “You said it, gurl,” and “Ummm-hmmmm,” but this was ballet, so they all nodded politely while practicing their turnout. I shifted my weight a bit to ease the pain and continued.

“So the thing is, this nerdy guy actually liked me back. Before him, my only option was a guy who stalked me after a They Might Be Giants concert.”

The ballerinas laughed. This time harder. I was killing it!

“Oh, and also the Puerto Rican camp counselor I lost my virginity to.”

Silence. Too much. I needed to get back on track.

“So before I came here, we parted ways, the nerd and I, and I thought we were on good terms, ya know? I was going to theatre school, he was going into politics at Brown, not exactly a lifelong match but we had our memories. We spoke a little after I got here, and I told him how much I was into dance, how I was finding my niche, how we were going in different directions . . .”

My audience was rapt. Rapt. I continued.

“Then, I go home, and we're hanging out, and I'm thinking all is cool between me and this nerd gone wild, and then he ran over my foot with his car.”

Silence. Did my audience think I was making it up? Did I lose them?

“Seriously, ladies, he ran. Over. My. Foot. With. His. Car. Conveniently just a few months after I told him I wanted to be a dancer. So, maybe we're not on such good terms, right?”

Laughter! There we go.

“I mean, there's no chance we can remain ‘just friends,' am I right?”

The dancers all agreed.

“But now I'm wondering, how can I be a long-stemmed beauty with only one working foot? I guess my only choice is to take up flamingo dancing.”

Awkward pause. Silence.

“You know, because flamingos stand on one foot. Ladies, come on, stay with me here.”

One by one the dancers began to laugh, which eventually all came together as one giant laugh, which was the most pleasing sound I had
heard since I'd snuck into that awesome Tom Petty concert. When the laughter subsided they made sympathetic faces at my horrendous luck. Throwing in the inside joke of “long-stemmed beauty” really sealed the deal. Then I brought it home.

“I guess my mom's childhood warnings of ‘Be careful walking' don't seem so ridiculous now. I apologize if I'm more of an angry limper than a ‘long-stemmed beauty' now”—the class laughed even harder.

I paused for effect, then clunked away feeling the noise of the crutches echo with every hobble I took.

I nailed it. It seemed so natural to stand in front of a crowd, recounting an unfortunate story and making people laugh. Although the experience was painful, literally, to endure, when I shared it with a crowd I felt better. I liked hearing the girls laugh and commiserate over my misfortune. I never wanted this moment to end.

The laughs finally subsided. It was time to start class. I hobbled over to the chairs on the side to observe class with my leg elevated.

I smiled as I took my seat, and took out a notebook to take careful notes on what I observed in class that day. Well, that was my intention. What I really did was spend the class writing down the funny speech I had just improvised in front of the class. I wasn't sure of when or how or why, but I had a feeling that one day, remembering the details of unfortunate situations from my youth just might come in handy.

A
nd that's how it all began for me. Sometimes life's events lead you to a very clear decision, and sometimes they don't. I can't tell you that when I fell off that stationary horse at horse camp that I was thinking,
Someday this will lead me to a career in comedic performance
. But I can say that recounting to a group of much thinner, much more talented ballerinas the events that led to me getting my foot run over by a nerd gone wild did make me think for the very first time that I might want to pursue comedy. So sometimes the pain is worth it for the final result.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” I've always wrongfully accredited it to Woody Allen, but I just looked it up, and you know who is actually credited with saying it? Carol Burnett! My hero! And I couldn't agree more. No, these stories are not tragic. But when they were happening, it felt as if the world was going to end. And now, because of time, they make me laugh.

Carol, once again, you are my queen. You said it best.

I'd love to tell you that after all this I love being tall, I always feel
beautiful, and I am no longer a dork but a totally cool person. But that would be a lie. I still slouch, I am still annoyed when trying on short dresses only to discover they don't even cover my crotch. I still get even more annoyed when at the dry cleaners they try to charge me the dress rate when I give them a blouse, arguing “This is dress!” while I retort “Well, it's a shirt on me!” And yes, perhaps it would have been easier to have had a more gradual rise in height. But it all led me here, and for that I am grateful for the experience.