In Greek legend, the Sphinx devoured travellers who failed to answer this riddle: “What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?” Oedipus correctly answered, “Man.”
Now if the riddle of the Sphinx is anything to go by, Frank Lentini took the morning and afternoon off.
Lentini was born with a parasitic twin attached to the base of his spine, leaving him with three legs, four feet, and two sets of genitals. Surgery was deemed too risky, so the young Frank grew up learning to control his extra leg. A travelling puppeteer discovered Lentini and took him to America where he began performing in circuses. The Great Lentini ‘s popularity soared as a “Three-Legged Football Player”. Despite the perceived advantage his extra leg gave him while he swam, Lentini would joke that even with three legs, he still did not have a pair. That was because all three legs were different lengths. Frank would complain about having to buy two pairs of shoes but joked that he had a friend with just one leg that would use the extra shoe. When asked how he dealt with the extra limb, he said, “If you lived in a world where everyone had just one arm, how would you cope with two?”
Lentini capitalized on the curiosity evoked by his two sets of functioning genitals by selling educational booklets to the public containing information about reproductive health. Lentini went on to father four children.
Retiring from circus life, he settled in Gibtown; A place where several other sideshow performers like Priscilla the Monkey Girl, the Alligator Man, the Lobster family, and Dotty the Fat Lady lived.
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