About Sausage Fingers and Soccer Calves

Daily writing prompt

What was the best compliment you’ve received?

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I didn’t know there was something wrong with me until second grade. A girl in my class looked at my hands and told me I had sausage fingers.

I was shocked when I heard her say that. Surely it couldn’t be true but when I looked at the fingers of my classmates, I noticed that my fingers were shorter, stubbier, and yes, they could pass as Sausage Fingers easily.

That moment changed it all. Until then, I had been a confident little girl with freckles and blue eyes who asked her grandma to cut her hair short because the long hair took too much time to dry and it tangled up all the time. I didn’t care what I wore or looked like. Until then I had never thought about beauty or wondered if I was pretty. Weren’t we all? I knew I wasn’t a princess, and preferred to be a tomboy but being called out to have sausage fingers? That was a bit much.

When I drove home from boarding school that weekend, at dinner that night I told my grandma what the girl had said, and when she looked at me and studied my fingers she nodded. “Look,” she said and put her right hand flat on the table, face down, “I have them too,” and she chuckled. “We both have sausage fingers.” I didn’t share her laughter but put my smaller hand directly beside hers. Yes, she was right. It was a family curse and I was doomed!

Later that night, she added that we have good worker hands. The kind of strong hands needed to raise children and work hard on a farm. I listened and everything she said made sense, now I just needed to accept my sausage fingers.

Years went by and I got older. I grew into my long limbs and went from being the smallest child in class to the second tallest in just one year. Finally, I developed like every girl should and it filled me with relief, there had been a time in seventh grade when I had thought nature had forgotten all about me.

Life was good. I was a happy and healthy teenager. I got my first kiss and my first real dress. I wore nylons, and I had heels on my shoes. Like all the other girls, I experimented with make-up until I looked like a raccoon -or Cleopatra- and I put nail polish on my nails, which drew more attention to my short, stubby fingers, but now I grew my nails longer and it seemed to help.

Was I beautiful? I don’t know. I guess I hoped to be.

After my grandmother had passed away, I moved to Vienna and after a year of grieving and mourning, studying and practicing adulthood for the first time, I settled into my new life.

I went shopping like every other twenty-year-old and in a small boutique, tugged away in the very back, I found the dress of my dreams. It was blue, the kind of blue you only see in clear rivers and the ocean. It was interestingly made, like a blouse. It was cut a bit wider and had buttons in the front all the way down, almost to the hips. It was held with a big blue metallic hip belt and the lower part of the dress was made like a pencil skirt, but not too short, it stopped right above my knee.

I loved it when I saw it, and when I tried it on in the fitting room I felt like a princess. The dress was perfect. It was my style and my color, and the fabric felt like silk. It was shiny and light and it cost more than I could spend, but I bought it anyway.

I had blue pumps that were just a bit darker but matched perfectly. I couldn’t wait to wear the outfit, and a short while later when I got an invitation to a club opening, I agreed to go without any hesitation.

That night I ‘pretzled up’ all the way, which was something I normally didn’t do. When I parked the car to enter the club, I felt special. Beautiful, amazing, confident, so many words come to mind.

The club was in a basement and I had to walk down open stairs to reach the lower level. When I was halfway down, I heard a group of young men laughing, “Look at those calves, like a soccer player,” one said and when I looked up to see who they made fun of, I saw them all looking at me.

I don’t remember much after that. I know I turned around and went up the stairs, from there I went to my car and somehow I made it back home.

When I walked to my apartment, I could see my reflection in a store window. I looked at myself and I still liked what I saw, but I also noticed my legs. I was a runner, a skier, a mountain climber and it showed. My calves were athletic and so was the rest of me.

“Soccer calves and sausage fingers,” the thought came to my mind and I didn’t feel so special anymore. .

It didn’t last long. I never wasted too much time on being pretty and I got over it. I wore the dress many times and I enjoyed wearing it. My soccer calves were part of me just like my sausage fingers and I made peace with it. My husband thinks I am beautiful, that’s all that matters, or so I thought.

Many years later, I arrived at a neighbor’s house, who had invited us for a cookout. The house was buzzing with noise and I saw familiar faces everywhere. All our neighbors and friends were there and we were greeted by many.

We had arrived later because of my husband’s work that day, and we were both hungry. My husband got us drinks and I walked to the buffet, took a plate, studied the dishes and trays, and tried to decide what I would eat.

All alone at the buffet, filling my plate, I heard a woman’s voice say, “Look at those calves,” and right then and there I relived the club night twenty years earlier. I didn’t turn around right away. It’s interesting how many thoughts we can have in one or two seconds, and how much can go through our minds in the blink of an eye.

“I am going to spend the night in jail,” I thought because the idea of hitting a stranger did cross my mind. I was wearing denim shorts and flat sandals. It was late summer in Texas and I was tanned. Not knowingly I was showing off my calves, my biggest weakness, the part of my body I was not proud of.

“I would kill to have legs like this,” I heard the same woman confess just a few seconds later, and two or three others agreed with her.

When I finally turned around I saw that everybody was staring at me -and my soccer calves. I was too old to blush, but I felt a bit warm inside. I listened to people discussing the form of my legs and calves and somehow I managed to cross the room and sit down at a table without stumbling all over those legs.

What years ago had made young men laugh, was now a piece of me that others admired. Something about me, that I had considered to be ugly was complimented by many that night.

It was the most important compliment I got in my life so far. Why? Because it put things back into perspective.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and so is everything else about us. Our smiles, our personalities, our character, and our behavior might attract some but not all, and that’s something we all need to remember.

We can’t please them all and we shouldn’t want to.

Be you! Be proud! Be humble!

Be confident, but never arrogant. There’s a thin fine line between them, so stay on the right side.