"Excuse me Maam, but did you know your toes are stuck together?"
Now apart from the fact that I resent being old enough to be called "Maam," there was the potential for so many ridiculous responses:
But instead I smiled politely and said, "Why yes, I did know that."
The smile spread to his face as his mom explained that he had the same thing and was starting to feel self-conscious about it. So I had him bust off his shoes and show me. Sure enough, we matched.
I explained to him that it is called incomplete simple/soft-tissue syndactyly and that about 1 in 200 people have it. Many people in my family bear these toes and it has become a source of "Mead pride." At the age of 4, my twin sister and I were shocked to learn, after arguing with our friend, that we were the "freaks" and not she. I learned at about his age that I could have an operation to separate them, but couldn't understand why I would want to.
Most importantly, I counseled him to severely mock anybody who thinks they were the first person witty enough to ask "Can you swim better?" to which he sincerely and quickly replied, "But I can! I swim so much better!"
That's fine. Whatever helps you embrace your identity, Kid. In the mean time, I'll keep embracing mine, even if I do sometimes wonder what it would feel like to spread my toes out wide.
2 comments:
Love those toes!
I love our webbed toes! Always have, always will! I still think the "normal" toes look funny, like how cartoon characters only have four fingers instead of five because otherwise it looks like too many?
It's the one physical feature that actually links us as twins. :) As soon as Will and Ben were born we were all checking their toes, but sadly they have normal, boring looking feet.
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