I had decided in fourth grade I was going to be a ballerina, a Prima Ballerina to be exact. I was entranced by The Nutcracker, the Red Shoes and various coloring books and stories about average girls who would strap on a pair of extraordinary point shoes and elongate the frame of their bodies into some amazing pose as they spun round and round, never tiring, or looking away from their audience. That would be me some day.
My elementary school was based off of an arts-integrated model. This was fancy talk for twice a week when we got to spend an hour singing, or learning how to draw, make paper, act or dance. I loved dance class. My friends and I would crowd into the restroom and change into our leotards and tights, with white socks over them so the teacher could distinguish our feet from the black floor mat. You were not allowed to dance if you were not properly dressed.
Once inside the portable classroom, we would line up around the room, each with a hand on the balance bar and plie in first and second position, bend back and forward and turn to the other direction and repeat. Then we would break up into groups and prance across the room doing whatever dance step or movement our teacher, Mrs. Yancy, would instruct us to. It was on a fateful day in fifth grade that the inevitable happened. I was paired up with Amy, a very nice girl with dark hair and freckles. We were galloping across the room “on horse back” when we tripped. She landed on top of me, or more specifically, my right leg and ankle, which was twisted and crushed under her large 10-year-old form. Our smiling giggling faces were soon transformed into wide-eyed looks of terror as I wailed, I was sure I heard something crunch or pop.
Amy rolled off of me and I struggled to get up. I was forced to sit out for the rest of the lesson, but did not want to go home. I spent the day limping from class, to recess and lunch until finally two o’clock hit and my mother arrived to pick my sister and I up. She examined me and told me I had sprained it. We knew then that my short-lived dream of dancing was over. My ankle would plague me for the rest of my days while nightmares of strange women cutting off my feet would haunt my dreams.
In high school, every Monday we ran laps around the track, usually about two miles. Katie Dyke and I were the fastest girls, and faster than most of the boys too. We would quickly run our laps and then sit and gossip about movies and what we were going to do after high school and the fact that we were going to be friends forever. Except for the day my right ankle gave out.
It was as if my foot had disappeared. I had only just picked up momentum. The entire class was around me because the whistle had just been blown to start running. I was trying to pass my ex-boyfriend, so he knew that things were defiantly over, when my foot vanished. The next thing I knew, I was slinging across the red track, arms out in front of me, 30 teenagers dodging me, while my knees and palms burned. I was a mess, covered in dry sand and wet blood.
Three years later, after graduating high school, and denouncing my friendship with Katie, I found myself at Pacific University. One night, on my way to paint the spirit bench, I got in a fight with Hillary’s lap top cord. It had somehow coiled itself around my ankle so when I attempted to simply walk across the room (I have since given up any faster form of movement) I somehow ended up on my face in the Walter hall kitchen, tears streaming down my face, mouth agape with ugly cries. I decided I should not be allowed to move through space because I would surely trip on something, hurt myself, and make it impossible for my ankle to ever heal properly.
I have since given up my dream of dancing and running tack. I do tempt fate when I paint the bench at ungodly hours of the night, but with a sorority of 20 in toe, I have faith they could spare me if I happened to trip during tug-o-war and ended up in tears. If anything, my disasters in movement have forced me to appreciate the finer things in life, such as sitting and laying down, where I can complete a wide variety of tasks from reading and writing papers, to sleeping, most of which involve very little movement and little risk of bodily harm. My ankle often ails me, which I feel is a good thing as a quiet reminder to take things slowly and enjoy the finer things in life.
