Are you "double-jointed"?

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Ok...let's see if we can settle this once and for all. I remember back when I was a kid (yeah...long ago!), some of my friends could bend their elbows 'backward' by several degrees (not me, though!), or could bend their fingers backward, and some could even bend their BACK backward so their eyes were looking through their legs...at what was behind themselves! Yikes! That was a strange one! Anyway...we used to say people who could do things like that were "double-jointed"; meaning their joints operated in double direction, I guess...not that they had "two joints". Then, sometime later on, I remember hearing that there really is "no such thing as double-jointedness". And, people who could bend things in directions or positions they really weren't intended to go were some sort of "freaks of nature" who were missing something or other in their bone and joint growth (at least that's how I recollect the explanation of the day). So....what's the real story? ARE there really "double-jointed" people? Are YOU one of those people? What is it really like?