Not literally MADE of them but born of them.
Let me explain.
I don't have many memories of my childhood. Hell, I don't have many memories from what I did last week let alone what I did 30 plus years ago. What I do remember is horrific and the rest I've conveniently blocked out thank God.
To fill the gaps I rely on fun, amusing stories about me. Mostly told by my Mom and my Aunt ("Fav").
There's my love of being naked and pushing a plastic shopping cart around the yard. There's the infamous T-Rex definition or the rubber hotdog story. But when I think about my failed career as a ballerina and the foot/leg problems that have plagued me my entire life, I think about the baby jumper and cigarette wrapper story.
Due to finances and other sad reasons I won't bore you with, my Mom and I lived with my Grandmother for many years at a really young age. Like really young, 1 or 2 maybe. Naturally when you have a baby in the house and you need them to amuse themselves, so Mom 1 and 2 can both go to work or do whatever it is that a 21 year old and a 50-something year old not wanting to deal with a kid would do - you put the kid in a doorway jumper. Hours of unsupervised, self amusement.
I must have been in the doorway jumper quite often, chilling by myself, because I made an olympic baby sport out of fishing for my Grandmother's cigarette wrappers on a nearby table.
To even touch the ground you need to get a little bounce to the baby ounce. Once I got that down, I had to add the bounce with forward and backward momentum. That meant stretching my fat little sausage legs down as far as I could to tip toe on the ground.
With my tiny little cocktail weiners skimming the carpet, I'd push myself backward in the jumper as far as my toes could go and would let go. Swinging forward, I'd kick my legs as fast as I could to propel me toward the crunchy, flashy wrapper on the table. And just before the jumper swung me back, I would reach out with all my might. It didn't take long before I'd snatch the suffocation devise from the table.
Amused, my Mom or Grandmother would move the wrapper further and further down the table. Requiring more bounce, tip toeing, and determination. Apparently this would go on for hours, day in and day out.
I didn't have a smoking problem. I had an addiction to the cigarette wrapper.
Little did cigarette companies know they were missing out on a whole new, younger generation of non-smokers to market to and get them addicted. You always hear about how revolting it is that cigarettes are targeted to teenagers. Shit. Cigarette companies need to run a campaign marketed to preemies - 2 year olds. Wrappers in different colors and flavors. Hello!?
My Mom loves recounting how I'd fling myself around in the jumper trying to snatch my Grandmother's cigarette wrappers. She oddly hasn't drawn the connection to this story and the other story she loves to tell - about the first time she put me in a pair of shoes. You know the ones. Teeny tiny white leather baby shoes the size of an espresso cup? We've all worn them. They're like standard issue baby gear, no matter what race or gender you are. My Mom is always so puzzled when she describes how much I screamed and cried the first time she put me in those little white coffins.
In those shoes I was a flat footed, caged bird. Incapable of doing the one thing I knew how to do by the age of 1...
Fly through the air on my tippy toes.
Now if she had slapped little ballerina slippers on my feet it would have been game on.
There's no doubt in my mind that I would've been a fucking prima ballerina by the age 10. Sure, the youngest to date was 29 by the time she became a prima but I would have had it in the bag. I was snatching cigarette wrappers off tables on my tippy toes before this bitch was even born.
Sadly, the jumper was replaced in time with the flat little white bricks. But in my mind my feet and legs never recovered from the pointe position. And my Mom never put me in ballet. Instead, I've been plagued with foot and flexibility issues my entire life.
Sure, growing too fast was a primary reason but I still like to think there was a missed opportunity early in my life to be a great ballet dancer. That probably smoked. Maybe.
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