Pigeon-Toed

By S.E. Schaible

My family never moved during my elementary school years, but a series of redistricting events and one notable condemnation of the Roosevelt School made it so that I was in a different school just about every other year. No big deal, right? Except I was badly pigeon-toed since birth, so much so that I slept with a bar between my ankles as a young toddler, and I was constantly going to see orthopedic doctors.

My mother was a registered nurse, one of the only moms I was aware of who worked, and I know she just wanted the best for me. So, she kept after my condition vigilantly. My father surely never complained about the cost, even if it was a strain on the finances to see yet another specialist in New York City. One of these many doctors determined the proper course of action would be a set of leg braces. Not something sleek like Tom Brady might wear today on a bum knee, some discreet titanium and Velcro unit for a sprained MCL. I am talking about a big, unkind leather waist belt with long metal cables running down each leg, attached with metal rivets into the heel of the shoes on the outside—truly the Forrest Gump situation. 

And by shoes, picture uncool shoes, not sneakers. Hard-soled leather man-shoes.

  I was fitted for my contraption toward the end of fourth grade, just in time for 180 days of wearing shorts in hot and humid Livingston, New Jersey. As the new school year approached, of course I ended up enrolled in yet another public school with an entirely new gene pool of students likely to light up the new kid with the lame hardware. I was anxious those last few days of summer, knowing full well how it was going to go for me following a months-long chorus of “loser” and “dork” shouted from cars, mopeds, and bicycles. My friends on the block were fine with my gear, but the shouts from random people were like running through a sprinkler spouting hydrochloric acid. I pretended not to hear the cruelty, but it would sting. 

I arrived on the first day of fifth grade that September with a few of my Roosevelt School and neighbor friends, but most of the kids had gone to Collins School since kindergarten. The comments flew like throwing stars from the glass case at the Hong Kong shop in the mall. Even when kids asked, “How was your summer?” it sounded like “Who’s the weirdo?” to me. Some kids were mercifully straightforward. “Hey, what’s wrong with your legs?”  “I’m just pigeon-toed, and this will fix it.” 

What specialists know today that they didn’t understand in the ‘70s was that most kids simply grow out of it and don’t need braces. 

I preferred the kids who made direct queries—ignorant or simply curious in nature—over the ones who turned away, leaving me to imagine what hurtful thoughts they were chuckling to their friends. The wondering— that entire rabbit hole—was the worst.

A handful of my peers, these Essex County fifth graders, were harsh enough that I felt like faking an illness just to get out of there. But I bit my lip, got through the day, and after school I walked home feeling like it could have been worse, taking a silent inventory of who had said what. In 1975 I could ponder payback the way you might consider which pie looked good in the rotating display case in a 24-hour diner. 

“How was school, sweetie?” “It was good, Mom. Mrs. Gall was nice. She asked if I was Chuck’s brother.” I didn’t want to burden her with the truth. Besides, she’d just call the principal, Mr. Grover, and it would only get worse.

Later that afternoon I walked to the Variety Fair five-and-dime for some baseball cards and a few packs of Chiclets gum. Flipping cards might be a good way to get to know the boys in this new school, and to settle some scores. I could practically throw a “leaner” at will—the card I threw would kiss the brick wall, flutter down, and lean against the wall on an angle. Normally the closest card to the wall takes both cards, but throw a leaner and I take every card on your body, not just the one card you flipped  against mine. 

Stripping a kid of a two-inch stack of Topps cards the first week of fifth grade was the elementary school equivalent of kicking the shit out of a random inmate on your first day in prison. You could create a narrative—a mythology. I could probably take down six or seven kids before word got around to avoid playing me. This idea I liked. 

But practically no girls flipped baseball cards, and girls had said some of the meanest things that day. Things like, “How’s the view from the short bus?” Somewhere between shopping at the dime store, catching frogs in Canoe Brook, and walking home with brook water squishing out of my idiot asshole grownup shoes with strands of smelly green brook moss stuck on the stainless-steel joints anchored into my heels, it came to me: a more nuanced plan than my baseball card smackdown.  

The Feen-a-Mint laxative gum that my mother sometimes gave me when I was constipated looked a lot like Chiclets. I grabbed the laxative from the medicine cabinet, went to my bedroom, enjoyed a jaw-crushing wad of actual peppermint Chiclets, and refilled the empty yellow packs with the Feen-a-Mint squares. I slid the slightly oversized pieces into the slim cardboard sleeve the way a hunter might load rounds into a clip.

I was 11 years old.

Day two in the new school. I reminded myself they looked just like Chiclets—not a perfect match, slightly thicker and squarer than a Chiclet, but shaking one out of the box, no fifth-grade kid would have thought twice.

I showed up cheerful and smiling in shorts and leg braces, about 30 baseball cards in one pocket. Good cards—Thurman Munson, Vida Blue, Joe Morgan, Tom Seaver—and the ersatz Chiclet packs stashed in the other pocket. I broke out the faux gum when I encountered the kids who had said harsh things the day before. “Hey, what’s up?  Want a Chiclet?  Here, just take the whole pack.”  

You can imagine what happened a couple of hours later. 

Picture that pie-eating scene from Stand By Me—but coming out the other way. It took Mr. Grover and the school nurse about 45 minutes to triangulate the matter back to me, following some explosive in-the-pants diarrhea and phone calls to parents. I was quietly sent home after lunch, and that was that. 

Today, there might be expulsion or legal ramifications for such an act. I’m thankful I wasn’t born even one year later than I was—today’s doorbell systems and cameras make it a challenge to even smash a pumpkin without doing recon and taking measured precautions. In this case, with a little help from administrators who gave me the benefit of the doubt, it was chalked up to he didn’t know it wasn’t regular gum. Case closed. Can you imagine anyone even noticing the kid in the leg braces when there were multiple stories about classmates pooping their pants? Walking the halls was a breeze after that.

I had made myself invisible.

Published SHIFT ISSUE–#6 (2024) pg. 59

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