Sunken Chest, Pirate's Delight: The Saga Of Self-Consciousness

(lower two photos by peggy longacre)


Hello,

Welcome to the first of what I hope to be many blog posts about my body.

[Hey! Wait! Where'd everybody go?!]

In photo #1 above you will see me standing on a diving board. This photo was taken in 1974 during a trip to myrtle beach with my friend Dave. Neither one of us had a car but Dave's parents let us use their very cool two-tone (green and white) 1958 Chevy Impala. Actually his dad did not like the idea, but Dave's mom talked him into it.

In addition to this, Dave's mom secretly placed two cases of beer in the trunk of the car for us. We didn't know it was there until we loaded our suitcases at about 5 a.m. on the day of our departure.

Dave's mom was very cool.

But about that first photo . . . yes, that is yours truly "gettin' out of hand" at a Myrtle Beach hotel swimming pool party hosted by Dave and me and attended by . . . well - Dave and me.

The photo is actually a "still" taken from one of our series of 8mm films titled "Girls Gone" that we unsuccessfully marketed for a brief time in the mid-70s. Of course it wasn't until later that Snoop Doggy Dog took our original idea, added "Wild" to the end of the title, then added actual live women, and . . . well - the rest is cinematic history.

But nevertheless there I am "gettin' crazed" standing on the diving board while *at the exact same time* holding a can of beer in my hand. Actually, given my fear of water, posing for this spontaneous photo was no small feat.

And speaking of "no small feat" . . . about that body of mine.

I would like you to focus on the middle area of photo number #2.  If you look very closely you will see a cavernous area, almost pot hole-like, that somewhat resembles a human chest.

That in fact is *my* chest.

Photos #3 and #4 don't really reveal anything additional about my chest.   I mainly included them because I thought that I looked pretty hot.

There is actually a name for my rather oddly shaped, hollowed-out chest.  It is called "pectus excavatum." It means that my chest is sunken when it should be either flat or slightly protruding.

Nowadays, babies born with this condition can have it corrected immediately. It sounds pretty horrible, but since a baby's bones are fairly malleable, their chests can be reformed by hand, or at least without having to break and re-set anything. I guess they just ram two fingers down the newborn's windpipe and then press out.

[Just kidding on that last part]

But unfortunately that was not the way newly hatched bundles 'o joy were treated back on April 24, 1954.

I was breathing,  I cried, and so I was good to go - "sunken chest" be damned.

As a young boy I assumed that everyone had a chest that looked like mine, and so I thought nothing of it when I would lie on my back on the floor with my feet pointed towards the television, the back of my head propped up on a pillow, and a little pile of popcorn or potato chips in the hollow of my chest. Occasionally someone would make a comment about my unique snack holder, but I would just shrug and continue snacking and watching TV.  I think that I just assumed that was the whole point of the design feature.

My concave chest also served me quite well at bath time.  Lying in the same position as described above I would fill my personal reservoir with water for my army men and jeeps.  And since it was always cold in our house, and even colder in the tub, my nipples ("command central east and west") served as great destination points for my soldiers as they traversed across "Lake Saint Kevin."

Later I found more utilitarian and romantically advantageous uses for my "pectus excavatum." It served as a fairly cozy bed (and later - a water dish) for a kitten that my first girlfriend and I found at the park behind my parent's house. And this young lady, and others, also found my slight skeletal deformity to be a comfortable place to rest their heads while lying in the grass with me. and for the slightly more petite lasses, it served as a nice forehead receptacle when being hugged or while dancing.

Oddly enough, I did not even know that my chest condition had a medical name until 1979.  I was about to enter graduate school and I needed to get a complete physical examination.  After the exam I noticed that the doctor had written something at the bottom of the generic form. When I read "pectus excavatum" I was a bit taken aback. I didn't have a clue what that meant or what it was referring to, I just knew that it sounded ominous. I asked the doctor about it and he just pointed and said "sunken chest." I said "oh - ok."

As we were walking out of the exam room I told him that the medical terminology made it sound a little scary - like I was diseased or something. I reminded him that I was starting graduate school in a couple of weeks and if it got out on campus that I had "pectus excavatum" no woman would ever come near me.   Just to counter-balance that possibility,  I told the doctor that I would slip him a ten spot if he would also write "penis gigantis" on my medical form.

He refused.

I must admit that it was kind of cool to have a medical condition with a name. But it wasn't until some 15 years later that I found out that the condition also came with actual side effects, ones that I had experienced but never associated with the condition.

It was in 1993 that a girlfriend conducted some research regarding my chest and discovered that, not surprisingly (even though it had never been mentioned to me) "pectus excavatum" could have a detrimental effect on lung capacity.  Apparently this side effect was prevalant enough that some adults with the condition were having their chests "broken" and reshaped.

My particular "concavity" is more pronounced on my left side, but I've never found any information on whether that may affect the capacity of my heart - to function as a physical organ, that is - not on its capacity to love, which goes on unfettered and uninhibited.

But the information about "stunted lung capacity" instantly turned on a very bright bulb inside my head. Suddenly a lot of things started making sense.

For many years I had participated in sports, and although my efforts were pretty successful, I always had a problem with stamina. I would spend weeks running and doing conditioning exercises - trying to get in shape for basketball - only to find myself out of breath after a few runs up and down the court.  My coaches were constantly giving me grief about not being in shape and would make me stay after practice to - you guessed it - run more laps.

But now I know that my problem had nothing to do with conditioning and everything to do with the lack of lung capacity due to a skeletal malformation.   

So, to all of those coaches of yesteryear (you know who you are) who ran my sorry ass ragged thinking that I was out of shape, I would like to say:

"Screw you bastards! You coulda killed me!"

Damn that felt good.  I'm glad that I finally got that off my chest 

OH! HA! HA! . . . I kid.

So this concludes the first in what I hope to be a series of blog posts about my body and all of its unique features and idiosyncrasies.

Please stay tuned for future installments in the "My Body, My Life" series, including these provocative titles:

"Dude?! What's The Deal With Your Ass?"  Growing Up With A Horizontal Butt Crack: The Kevin Smith Story

and

"Oops, Sorry About That . . . Um - So I Guess This Probably Means 'No'  For Prom Night, Right?"  Growing Up With Projectile Acne: The Kevin Smith Story

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