How I Acquired My Lack of Poise

UP TO my fifth year, I was sublimely unself-conscious, completely and magnificently at home in any surroundings, and comfortably friendly wit h any creature, on two legs or four. There was only one trouble. I was — no matter how they tried to disguise it with dresses that were striped vertically or otherwise cunningly devised — shaped exactly like a butterball. I even moved like a butterball — frontwards, backwards, or sideways, depending on the position I happened to be in when I started.

This condition did not bother me in the least. I was quite capable of rolling down a flight of stairs, picking myself up unconcernedly, and continuing whatever conversation had been momentarily interrupted. My social poise was not in the least disturbed by my lack of physical poise. Apparently it did bother grownups, however, and eventually it was decided, over my head, that I was to study ballet. Ballet dancing, my parents were convinced, would enable me to go forth in life serene and graceful.

My older sister, who was eight then, was much too tall and thin, and they decided to fix both of us up at once. We took lessons in a class of about thirty little girls, and our teacher’s name was something Russian that ended with the syllable -ova. For years after, I had the delusion that I had studied with Pavlova, At that age a few consonants one way or the other don’t bother you much.

We were all togged out with little dancing dresses, and ballet slippers, and wads of lamb’s wool for the toes. And since all the dancing dresses were alike, the net result was that right at the very beginning my sister looked even taller and thinner than she had before, with a great deal of long leg sticking out below the hem of her dress like a stork, and I looked more than ever like a butterball —especially since my dress happened to be yellow.

The classroom was a nightmare of long mirrors, and for the first time in my life I saw myself objectively in a group of other children. Since we were all dressed exactly alike, the hideous difference between the way I looked and the way they looked was at once clear to me. The word “butterball” took on a new and terrible meaning.

The dancing didn’t go too well, either. I was (and still am, since I avoid exercise in any form) remarkably limber. So limber, in fact, that we might as well admit that I am double-jointed almost all over. Everything wobbles. When all the other children took a position, I tried to do it too, only some joint always gave way and started bending in the other direction. I never did succeed in standing on my toes, but I was quite successful in concealing this fact by standing behind other children who could and often did stand on their toes. If Madame Pastrova (or Varnova) knew it, she never said anything.

At the end of the year there was the recital. Since it was my first public appearance, I did not yet have the sense to be afraid. It was not until the audience was all assembled and the dancing had started that the full horror of it struck me. I was the smallest of the children, in height if in nothing else, and I had to dance in the very front. I suddenly realized that there I was in front of all those people, and there was nobody to hide behind. I stood stock-still, while I took the situation in; then I burst into tears and was led quietly away.

There were no more dancing lessons — especially after it was discovered that persistent effort to achieve position number five had definitely flattened my sister’s feet and mine. The dancing lessons were replaced for a while with foot exercises designed to repair the damage, and it was a good many years before my feet once more regained a somewhat normal shape. We were further supplied with heavy metal arch supports which caused our shoes to bulge and crack, and which caused us to walk with a peculiar thumping gait.

Now that these torments are past, I’m not too unhappy. There doesn’t seem to be much opport unity, in my part of society, for breaking into dances, and I’m no longer shaped like an egg anyway, so it isn’t any great loss that the lessons were so unfruitful. And now, every time I crash into an end table, I’m just full of poise — I tell the story about the time I took ballet lessons.