The baby was born without joints. She was like a gumby, her limbs miraculous until the miracles stopped happening. She couldn’t play basketball, for instance, because her geometry was off. She was good at other things, like catering to other people’s feelings. Like maybe another student wasn’t good at math, or maybe another walked like a stick. She had a sense of humor, was good at saying some things like, Hey! Look at me! At least you’re not a Gumby!

Doctors had no answers. Hmm. They’d put their fingers to their faces. She noticed the joints in their fingers. Scratching up their cheeks. That looked so taxing. 

She noticed paper clips. How they were so useful at attaching things. How some things seemed so otherwise disjointed. 

It was nice to be so flexible. She was supposedly disabled. Her parents, when she was a child, went to the school board to try to make all sorts of accommodations for her. Because of her lack, perhaps she couldn’t think straight. Because she was so flexible, she really had a hard time being straight about anything. She laughed about that, but her parents were so yardstick, they didn’t think that was funny.

As a child, she spent a lot of time in her room, pretzeling her limbs around all other parts of her body. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her, so they brought in fuzzy stuffed animals. First there were the Mickey Mouse kind, then they started bringing in the cross-eyeds. Then the angels. After that, they just figured it was time to get themselves their own set of ear plugs. 

It wasn’t a tragedy, like so many other tragedies you see most days on TV. 

The baby lived on. She turned out to be a very successful ballerina. You can also see her on TV. 

She’s the one on every rich girl’s dresser. The one that will stall halfway through if she hasn’t been wound-up enough.