Just so not lucky at all.

It's the strangest thing. I took Sonja and Haven to Kindergym this morning so that they could burn off some energy before nap time. Thank goodness for Kindergym. I was sitting on a mat with Haven, helping her play with some little toys and watching Sonja as she sat on a tricycle and ran all around the gym. Suddenly I was thinking about when I was little and I had a rabbit's foot. Really? Why did I start thinking about my old rabbit's foot at a time like that? The mind is a mystery.


My rabbit's foot was a dark-pink colour and of course it was very soft and fluffy. I remember rubbing it up and down my cheek and marvelling at it's softness. It had a round metal top that always reminded me of the top of a Christmas ornament and there was short ball chain so that the rabbit's foot could be attached to a key chain or anything else I wanted. 


Like most kids, I had a relatively short attention span for anything but my most favoured toys. All other toys, although fiercely loved for the short period after they were acquired, quickly faded to the periphery. The rabbit's foot fell into this category, along with several other small, trinket-like items I got from vending machines and cereal boxes. Almost all of these things ended up being broken and thrown out, or stuffed into boxes and drawers to be forgotten.


My rabbit's foot ended up at the back of the top drawer of my dresser; my junk drawer. That drawer was stuffed with all kinds of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac, along with old scented erasers, broken pencils, Hot Wheels, stickers that had lost their stick, socks that had lost their mates. It was essentially a graveyard, or more accurately, a resting place until I had the heart to throw the entire contents into the trash. And I finally got the nerve to dump everything out of that drawer the day I reached to the very back while rummaging to find something I had misplaced and pulled out my rabbit's foot instead.

That rabbit's foot had likely been at the back of that drawer for three years. I had completely forgotten I owned and it took me a few moments to realize that the thing in my hand and my rabbit's foot where one and the same. The soft, fuchsia fur was gone. Disintegrated. All that was left was the foot. The foot with the tiny, curled toes and bottom portion of the rabbit's leg extending up, clamped at the top with the Christmas ornament clasp and the ball chain. It was grotesque and when it finally dawned on me what I was looking at, I dropped the dismembered paw in horror and ran from the room.


That was the end of my childhood junk drawer; everything in it was permanently tainted and had to go. I pulled out the drawer and tipped it unceremoniously into a large black garbage bag. Good riddance. And the entire time, I wiped hot tears from my eyes and wondered what had happened to the rest of the rabbit.


The worst part was my memory of rubbing the soft fur of the rabbit's foot up and down over my cheeks. I never, ever thought that there was an actual foot under all that fur; I thought "rabbit's foot" was just a funny name for a fuzzy toy that was somewhat shaped like an animal's paw. I felt foolish and somehow wronged. I was twelve-years old and it was as if a part of my childhood ended the moment the foot was revealed; it couldn't be unseen, no matter how hard I tried. I started to wonder what other seemingly innocent and innocuous things in my life harboured shadowed and horrendous truths. I now suspect that the revelation of the rabbit's foot was the beginning of my harsh, cynic's eye on the world.


I can't recall the last time I saw a rabbit's foot and I honestly hope I never see one again. Until this memory popped into my mind this morning, I don't think I'd thought about it in over twenty years, but it's amazing how I'm as disgusted now as I was back then. Some things just aren't right and rabbit's feet are one of those things.