On the loss of the career so cruelly denied to me

Last night my pilates teacher told me - and the room at large, for that matter - that I have amazing, prehensile feet. Luckily, I've been watching Animal Exploration on Qubo lately, because until about two weeks ago I would have thought she meant they were better suited to cavemen and should have gone out with the ark.

When my children were born, the first thing my mother asked on being informed that she had a new grandchild was whether they had my feet. (Okay, practically the first. After whether they had curly hair.) The funny thing is that even on a newborn, it was easy to see that they didn't. This is because my husband's toes look like fingers, and my toes look like toes. Or tiny nubby things, depending on your perspective.

My feet are basically pyramid-shaped. They're short and wide with a very high arch. I try not to bore people with the litany of all the shoes I have bought that didn't fit me, and all the shoes I can't even try to wear because they would fall off immediately or not even go on. They are my father's feet, except his are even worse, mostly due to the accident he had 40 years ago, resulting in a smashed patella, a broken femur, a broken tibia/fibula, and something wonky happening on down at foot level. He was lucky to keep the leg and is on his second artificial knee. Which, I suppose, should put my finding it hard to find nice shoes into perspective. But hey, I'm shallow.

I never thought much about my feet as a child, until one day my so-called friends from high school saw me barefoot and did the point-and-laugh thing about how intensely weird they were. After that, I knew for certain that my feet were not just difficult to sandal, shoe or boot, but also freakish and probably malformed. Even reading that a high arch was considered a sign of good breeding in years gone by wasn't really enough to take out the sting.

Then, a few years ago, I started taking pilates classes. My teacher is an amazing woman - a librarian who used to be a ballet dancer. She's 70 years old, and an inspiration to everyone to keep at it. In class, she doesn't take things too seriously, and knows that we probably don't managed to put spine to mat in between classes. One evening she was exhorting us all to practice more regularly: "Just imagine how you'd feel if you did even ten minutes a day!" she told us enthusiastically. "It would be amazing."
"Well, yes, it would be amazing," we all replied dryly.

When she saw my feet, she asked if I was a dancer.
"No," I replied.
"Ah, those that have it never use it," she said enigmatically.

One thing partaking in an exercise class like this does that no DVD can do is to show you how many variations the human body comes in. I always assumed that everyone could bend their limbs about the same amount, that everyone's head could touch their knees if they tried hard enough, that everyone's toes pointed all the way down. But looking around my class, it's amazing to see how far, or how little, we can all twist or bend or gyrate when doing the same silly exercises. For instance, when I sit on the ground with my legs out in front of me and my toes pointing up to the ceiling, it's very hard for me to stop them from doubling over and pointing towards my head instead. They don't want to go straight up from my feet. If I sit the same way and point my toes as hard as I can towards the wall, they almost touch the ground. I suspect this is peculiar.

Clearly, I have the feet of a great ballerina. (I stashed the rest of her in the freezer.)

But this amazing genetic trait went unrecognised by my parents. I even read the books - Ballet Shoes, and A Dream of Sadler's Wells and its companions are still on my bookshelf in Dublin. The kicker is that I did take ballet from the age of four until the time for the class for my age group moved too close to dinnertime for comfort, and then my Mum took me out and put me in drama instead. A great career stymied by something as prosaic as dinner. And, probably, lack of innate talent and too much of a taste for the easy life, but that's just splitting hairs.

Sadly for their dance careers - though happily for their shoe-buying futures - neither of my children have inherited my feet which are both amazing and prehensile. But I will be paying attention when presented with my first grandchild, and if they have short, fat toes, I will not depress everyone by discussing how much they'll have to spend at the orthopedist's, but rather celebrate the newest proto-ballerina in the family.