this is for the lithe, like me. we're kind of lanky in between people with good hearts and sharp eyes. we get flattened by people just like you everyday. we don't come around so often. you'll never find two of us in one family. you can see our hearts beat.
when i was eight, i was on the swim team for my neighborhood. i was great at backstroke. twice a week we'd have swim meets against other neighborhoods. i always placed first in the backstroke. i was nasty. this is a specialty of us, the lithe. between heats, the girls in my neighborhood would approach me and ask me to take my shirt off. this wasn't so they could admire my physique in its pre-pubescent glory, on the contrary! i was mad thin back then just as i am now. my chest cavity was so un-muscular that my big heart would beat through my sternum. it was kind of like biology class for eight year old girls. i think for some reason this had a great deal of significance for me. there was this cruel fascination about the sickliness of my body, my gaunt, malnourished features that gave these children the sensations we adults might experience rubbernecking some horrific traffic accident.
it was around this time that my mother began to worry about me. from her point of view, it made no sense; she had two other boys flanking me at either end and both were solidly built, well fed, voracious trashcan appetites. all of us were thin to be certain, but not to the degree i was. it was in her great sense of hysteria that my insecurities about my body image manifested themselves. my mother had a knack for working herself up into a frenzy and with this her predictable reaction was to call the doctor.
"there's something odd with his chest."
"let's take a look," said my doctor. his name was dr. killinger. after pressing on my chest for a few seconds, dr. killinger looked up at my mom. "pigeons..."
"pigeons?"
"that's right, pigeons."
"what does that mean, pigeon's," my mother replied with a tremble of annoyance.
"pigeon chest."
my mother grabbed my arm and pulled down with force till she reached my wrist.
"put your shirt back on, right now," she said.
i put my shirt on and my mother shoved me out the door. in the hallway, i could hear her raise her voice at the doctor, but i can't remember what she said. i'm sure it was something spiked tongued and defensive on my part. i mean its gotta be tough to hear a doctor tell you that you're son has some rare condition that will steer his life down some road of self-conscious doubt. every mother believes her children are perfect just the way they're built and i think in some small way this was my mother's very unique brand of showing me how perfect she thought i was. after a minute in the hallway, my mother came out, very composed and told me to come back inside. dr. killinger said that i had nothing to worry about, that in most cases it grows out or "levels" as he put it.
"what about his weight, his frame," my mother asked.
"he's in great shape."
great shape? ugh. i was eight!
so life moves on and i'm the prototypical skinny dude, long and frail looking. big hands, large wide feet, the torso of a ladder, waldo in the face, monkey armed and two stumps to lunge with that don't match the rest of my body. there are worse things.
