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10 January 2006

The thread I'll regret starting..... What bizarre physical attribute do you have?
→[More:]Everyone seems to have one. A friend's ex had a penis that he could roll back into itself until it disappear. During a slightly too boozy working lunch, an author I worked with unbosomed himself about the third nipple he possessed. Mine's pretty tame — at 5'5" in height, I take a 32" leg in jeans. What's your physical quirk that might or might not have gotten you throttled at birth were you living a Chrysalids-type world?

post by: Orange Swan at: 17:05 | 58 comments

I have immense funnybones. No, seriously, those gaps in my elbows are huge. More than anything else, my giant funnybones taught me to be less clumsy.

posted by Hugh Janus 10 January | 17:12

I have Morton's Toe.

posted by agropyron 10 January | 17:13

I have freakishly skinny wrists and ankles.

posted by mudpuppie 10 January | 17:14

I have an enormous schwanstücker.

posted by mr_crash_davis 10 January | 17:15

Where most people have flesh between their kneecap and the lateral ligaments of their knee, I have a divot. When I was younger, it was deep enough to hold water when I flexed my muscles.

Beyond that, I'm not telling.

posted by me3dia 10 January | 17:17

*googles schwanstücker*

Hmpf.

posted by iconomy 10 January | 17:17

Try it without the umlaut.

posted by mr_crash_davis 10 January | 17:20

Iconomy, lose the umlaut and you get results. (Although I'm not sure they make sense.)

posted by mudpuppie 10 January | 17:21

I was looking on images.google.com - was looking for images of said schwanstücker. Look...hee.

posted by iconomy 10 January | 17:22

I also have an undeveloped third nipple. And yes, beyond that I'm not telling.

posted by tr33hggr 10 January | 17:27

I can pop my left shoulder in and out of its socket.

posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld 10 January | 17:29

I was born with six fingers on one hand. The extra one on the other hand fell off in the womb.

(They removed the extra after birth by tying it off till it fell off. So I look normal, in the hand area at least.)

posted by kyleg 10 January | 17:29

Oh, and I'm the opposite of Orange Swan. I'm 5'9" and wear 29" leg jeans.

posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld 10 January | 17:30

I have a hyperaccelerated autoimmune system.

What this means is that a lot of the normal, behind-the-scenes processes that go on in your body are sped way up - bone mass, cell growth, etc. So I have enormously sensitve skin and debilitated joints. I get tired very easily.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 10 January | 17:30

I have nothing physically weird going on. I kind of wish I did.

posted by gaspode 10 January | 17:33

I have amblyopia, and therefore no binocular vision, and therefore very poor depth perception (monocular but not binocular cues). Please do not throw me a pen, keys, ball, or frisbee (except frisbee girl), make me walk around a corner with a ladder, or stand anywhere in the same city when I am attempting to parallel park.

posted by matildaben 10 January | 17:35

I have one eye and no nose.

* dies *

posted by dodgygeezer 10 January | 17:37

My little toe curves under my other toes.

posted by jrossi4r 10 January | 17:38

I have a pointed ear (½ Vulcan?). One of my legs is shorter. I apparently also have Morton's Toe. And I'm not giving it back.

Also, to my chagrin, I have dimples.

Ma~, I also have poor depth perception, but mine is due to having one nearsighted and one farsighted eye. I only wear one contact lens, as my farsight is minor.

posted by Eideteker 10 January | 17:41

I also have one nearsighted (my working eye) and one farsighted (my lazy eye).

posted by matildaben 10 January | 17:46

haha dodgy, thats a good one.

Isn't schwanstücker a Young Frankenstein reference?

posted by puke & cry 10 January | 17:46

Other than the ganglionic cyst that appeared on my wrist over the weekend, I'm relatively normal, being I have two of the things I'm supposed to have two of and so on. My inner ears are insanely sensitive and I barf on planes and can't scuba dive or ride in the back seat of a car.

posted by chewatadistance 10 January | 17:51

I have an extra tooth under my tongue.

posted by arse_hat 10 January | 17:58

Isn't schwanstücker a Young Frankenstein reference?

Yes, it is. Kudos.

posted by mr_crash_davis 10 January | 17:59

I have gobs and gobs of extra fat.

posted by Mrs.Pants 10 January | 18:00

I have one eye and no nose.

* dies *

Very, very funny dodgy.

My fingers are odd...they kind of bend up at the ends, and the index fingers sort of aim away from the thumb when extended as well. I don't think I am describing this well. I know only one other person who seems to have these fingers...my sister. Jen thinks my youngest daughter may have them...woohoo!

posted by richat 10 January | 18:05

I had five fully-formed wisdom teeth.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 10 January | 18:11

Which is why I'm so wise! Yuck, yuck, yuck.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 10 January | 18:12

My fingers are odd...they kind of bend up at the ends, and the index fingers sort of aim away from the thumb when extended as well.

I hazily recall reading that this is a medical symptom of some sort... damned if I can remember what.

Not to alarm you. I'm sure you're fine.

posted by me3dia 10 January | 18:33

I am a fan of Mrs. Pant's gobs and gobs of perceived extra fat - as well as the pink eyeliner, the golden boots and the insane artistic talent.

I have spoken.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 10 January | 18:35

I have what is known as a varicocele. No joke.

If you don't know what that is, you're better off not knowing. If you insist on finding out, don't google it at work.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 10 January | 18:42

Thanks me3dia...now I am all freaked out. There is a syndrome called fragile x (!) that suggest some hyper extension of the fingers. Is that the one you were thinking of?

I don't have fragile x, I am pretty certain anyway...I do like to please, but I don't have gigantic testicles, honest.

posted by richat 10 January | 18:46

I have a nose that was broken when I was a tot and it still shows. One of my nipples becomes erect on stimulation, the other does not. I have really hairy toe knuckles. I'm so skinny that naked, I look like a famine victim. Also, my ass is not just flat, it's concave. My eyes are also kind of off-center and I have one pimple that hasn't gone away for over a decade. It waxes and wanes like the moon, but it never vanishes entirely. Also, when I was a child, I was hyperactive (ADD hadn't been invented yet), I chewed my shirt collar, was really uncoordinated, and I had a speech defect and a condition called echophenomena, where I would repeat everything I said twice, but not hear myself doing it. That freaked out the whole neighborhood for a while.

My adulthood adjustment difficulties are making more sense.

posted by jonmc 10 January | 18:50

wow jon, that echophenomena is pretty wild stuff.

posted by richat 10 January | 18:56

A goddamn titanium plate in my forearm.

It's fucking tough.

posted by cmonkey 10 January | 19:00

Nothing physical, but I do have the ability to cloud men's minds. It comes in particularly handy while playing scrabble.

posted by bmarkey 10 January | 19:01

wow jon, that echophenomena is pretty wild stuff.

Yeah, it's a tough deal all around. But to make up for it I'm hung like a bear.

posted by jonmc 10 January | 19:03

I'm dysthymic.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 10 January | 19:04

Well there you go then jon. It all evens out eh? Now, go check out my first ever mecha fpp about one of my favourite bands...

posted by richat 10 January | 19:05

My left foot is a little shorter than my right one?

Sorry, that's all I got.

posted by killdevil 10 January | 19:09

Oh, dodgy. Harsh. I'm with gaspode in the nothing unusual camp. The closest thing I have is really terrible eyes (so bad that I'll go blind eventually) and a ton of perfect teeth (5 wisdom, like TPS). But those hardly come close to a one-eyed, no-nosed kitty or a retractable penis man.

posted by panoptican 10 January | 19:18

I'm not the only one with 5 wisdom teeth?

::pouts at not being unique anymore::

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 10 January | 19:22

I have 10 wisdom teeth.

posted by puke & cry 10 January | 19:32

I got the same thing going on as PinkStainlessTall, and I got crooked pinkies. at the second knuckle my pinkies bend in at about 45 degrees. When I was a kid I had lazy eye but I got it fixed. I had crooked legs as a toddler, and had to wear special shoes.

posted by Edible Energy 10 January | 19:36

My index penis is longer than my middle penis.

posted by danostuporstar 10 January | 19:53

Hm. Let's see. I was born with a lazy eye, on the left. I can't cross my eyes properly -- well, I can, but it's asymmetrical. As a result I can't see most stereograms -- believe me, I've tried, and I'm usually good with optical illusions.

Oh, and we tried having it fixed -- I wore an eyepatch most of one summer. There was some improvement, I understand, but not enough to make it worth continuing.

This may explain a lot of the clumsiness I had as a kid, which didn't really go away until I took t'ai chi as an adult.

The other thing I was born with was markedly crooked pinkies. This is actually a very common recessive gene -- it was an example used in one of my science classes. But mine are very much more crooked than most people's. I've been asked if they were broken.

Then there's my nose. I was in a car accident as a kid and smashed my face into the back of the front seats. The cartilage was damaged and as a teenager I had a very odd-looking triangle of very bony cartilage that made my nose look flat. I had surgery for it at 16, and it doesn't look half bad, though I kinda still would like it touched up a bit. If I get money.

I have a knee that took a real bad whack about ten years ago. I was sledding with some friends and plowed into some snow feet first -- then into my friends! I couldn't see them in the spray. My knee was fucked up for most of that year but I nursed myself back to health. I only saw a PT once. I expect it will go bad sooner than my other knee. I was really more worried about my friends; she was pregnant!

I have bad gum disease now and need serious dental care I can't afford. That's probably due to my prediabetes.

Is that enough? I'm sounding like an old man. I hate talking about my health.

posted by stilicho 10 January | 19:55

I HAVE NO UVULA.

posted by Uncle Glendinning 10 January | 20:21

i have this weird, strange, beautiful face.

posted by sam 10 January | 20:22

My dog has no nose.

posted by yhbc 10 January | 20:26

Ooh! Okay, this wasn't me, but I used to work in a building (okay, it was the Texas State Capitol) with this guy who literally had no neck.

I said that to a friend once, and she didn't believe me.

And then she saw him.

He honestly did not have a neck.

posted by mudpuppie 10 January | 20:56

I didn't grow wisdom teeth.
I have a cleft nose.

posted by rebirtha 10 January | 22:08

I can disjoint both knees for fun and profit. I have trace vestigial third and fourth nipples. There was an amusing trick previously mentioned about a male member kind of becoming its own mobius strip; mine can do that. My left leg is slightly longer than my right. I've got sleep apnea (brand new diagnosed) and two leaky heart valves. But hell, I'm alive, somehow.

posted by moonbird 10 January | 22:12

Nothing truly bizarre, I don't think:

I was born without hip sockets and didn't walk until I was almost two and then only because of special shoes. If the shoes hadn't worked I would have had to wear braces and if that didn't work surgery was on the agenda. Both hip joints will have to be replaced at some point. I also have mild scoliosis.

posted by deborah 10 January | 23:16

Much of my excess fat is in my legs.

posted by bunnyfire 10 January | 23:42

yhbc: How does it smell?

posted by LarryC 11 January | 00:34

I get tongue cramps.

If I don't use deodorant for a week in the summer my pits will stink for the entire following week.

That is all.

posted by sarah connor 11 January | 11:03

Terrible!

(thank you, LarryC!)

posted by yhbc 11 January | 13:23

That is my 6-year-olds favorite joke.

posted by LarryC 11 January | 22:11

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