HEARTS OF GOLD, LIMBS OF RUBBER
SPOTLIGHT ON EXCEPTIONALLY FLEXIBLE STUDENTS

IT'S AN INDISPUTABLE FACT that Armagh Project students are noted for their incredible intelligence, often compared to supercomputers. They are frequently good-looking, too, as well as being witty, cultured, and with class that puts royalty to shame. But life isn't all smarts, good looks, and attitude. A few students among the bunch harbor a secret. An unknown, even dangerous talent: extraordinarily flexibility.

Their limbs seem to defy all the laws of nature as these students bend and twist themselves into pretzel-like contortions, laughing merrily as their stomach-churning performances have classmates looking away in disgust. Their bones seem to be made of rubber; their muscles and tendons display a startling range of movement unseen in mere mortals. Today we focus on these students: their hopes, their fears, their bendy arms.

"I was bored one day," Chrissy Doughty tells me, picking at her dinner. "I was just sitting there in class." Doughty's boredom was to lead her into realms rarely explored by ordinary humans. She pulled at her fingers. She pulled them up towards her hand. And they kept going. And going. A few seconds later, Doughty had pulled her finger all the way to the back of her hand. Demonstrating her talent Monday night, she showed no sign of pain.

Is there something wrong with her bones?

"I don't think so," the tow-headed moppet replied. "But maybe I'm Elasta-Girl."

Has she ever used her extraordinary talent to stop a crime, perhaps?

"Yes," she replies smugly. She refuses to disclose which, however.

A table away sits Gonzaga student Megan McGovern. Like Doughty, she harbors a dark secret, one that she traces back to a childhood accident that left her arms as bendy as a bowlful of jelly.

"I was riding my bike," McGovern explained. "My shoe was untied, and I was too lazy to tie it-- I rode anyways. Two houses down, while pedaling, the whole bike tipped, and I broke my arm in seven places. It never healed properly."

She raises her well-toned arms in the air above her, bending them in an uncanny manner.

But if she only broke one arm, how is it that both arms can bend? On being asked, a look of confusion crossed McGovern's normally serene face. She shrugged and went back to her dinner.

Fellow Gonzagan Brigid Carey knows only too well what life is like as a member of this secret club. In Carey's case, she found herself licking places few dare to dream of in her search for the ultimate bendy high.

"I can lick my own elbow," the demure football fan smiled, extending her moist tongue to her elbow and licking heartily. "It's supposed to be impossible, but I can do it. They say 75% of people who hear about it try it-- and they all fail. I first read about it in my daily planner in 7th grade, and I too had to try it. It was easy!"

Her classmates gasped and she spread saliva across her elbow with a cheeky grin.

Not to be outdone, your own faithful editor lept to the occasion, combining two in one: McGovern's arm bend and Carey's elbow-lick. He waited for the applause to die down before returning to his goat-cheese pizza.

With all these hidden talents around, how do ordinary students feel-- those whose arms stop bending at the regular place; those whose wet tongues wag furiously short of the elbow? Are students vigorously stretching regularly, tugging on arms and legs in an attempt to "bend it like Doughty"?

"No-- I'm fine," grad student Meg Carey told me with a shudder. "I like my body to be normal. I don't want to be a freak."