I used to volunteer at the Washington Ballet School.  From my little office on K street, I’d hop on the red line, make a requisite stop at Whole Foods, then arrive at the school where loads of kids would be starting classes, ending classes and stretching in the middle of the hallways.  There was no job description for my position but it usually involved some administrative work, some planning and a lot of ice and Bandaid dispensing.

One evening, a senior student came to the office looking for Superglue.  I assumed a shoe had torn or a costume was snagged and so I helped him rummage around.  We eventually found a tiny tube of Krazy Glue at which point he sat on the ground and took off his ballet slipper, revealing a sweaty, mangled, blistered foot, with some low-grade bleeding.  Sure, a little gross, but ordinary in ballet school.  What came next was disgusting and unexpected (though still ordinary from what I’ve heard): the mending of split blisters using glue!  Ridiculous!

Noticing my recoil, he said, “Don’t worry, it’s made for this.  It sticks skin together so that it won’t crack apart anymore.”

With just a little drying time, the ballet slipper was on and he was back in the studio, landing jumps on newly patched feet.

And, as it turns out, he was right.  Superglue was originally made for times like this.

This entry was posted Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 9:27 am and is filed under Les Bon Mots, Looking Backwards, Observed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.