I had a post that I have been working on for a couple of days that I was going to post today, but I decided to hold off on that one and write about a story that is in the news right now. To make a long story short, a British television channel for kids called CBeebies hired a new presenter named Cerrie Burnell and some parents are very upset about her being on TV because she is missing part of one arm. Some parents have filed complaints about her hosting their kids show because they say she is frightening their children. They say that their kids are asking questions about her, and don’t understand why she is missing part of her arm. Now, granted I don’t have children of my own, but isn’t that what kids normally do when they don’t understand something? They ask questions right? I mean that’s what adults do when they don’t understand something, right? Again, I don’t have kids of my own, but isn’t that the parents responsibility, to answer said questions? I know if I had kids and they didn’t understand something I would want to help them understand, and the way I would do that is to answer their questions. Personally I don’t think shielding anyone from the real world does them any good. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I will. For all of the people in the world, more specifically all the people that have written ignorant comments about this lady scaring their kids, I hate to tell you this but Cerrie Burnell is the real world. Just because you don’t want people that are different on your TV for your kids to see doesn’t mean that we still don’t exist. You can’t change the fact that there are people that are different from you, but you can control how you chose to deal with those people and how you teach your children to deal with them. I would love to live in a perfect world, but we don’t. The reality of this world is that every one is different in some way. I would hate to live in a perfect-cookie-cutter world where everyone is the same. How boring would that be? Ok, I will get off my soapbox now. I just think its silly to expect children to not be curious about people that are different, and I also think its silly for parents to not take advantage of a perfect opportunity to teach their kids about diversity.

If you want to read some of the comments about this story I will post a couple of links below. You should check them out and tell me what you think about the story and the subsequent reactions from parents.

Here is the original article on the UK website MailOnline

Here are the responses about the show on the channels BBC page

Here is the story on The Today Show on MSNBC

Here are the responses on the MSNBC message boards

What’s your take on this story? I would love to hear from you on this subject. Leave a comment on this post and let’s talk.

As much as I like to say that I can do anything anyone else can do, I have to be honest with you, there are just some things that I can not do without making a scene. I went to a skating rink this weekend and hung out with a friend who was having a birthday party. It has probably been over fifteen years since I was on a pair of roller skates, and I didn’t really want to have to chase down my leg so I sat this one out. Afterwards I got to thinking about some of the incidents that I have had. When I was younger and a little more active I wore a neoprene sleeve to hold my prosthetic leg on. I haven’t worn one in a few years because as I have gotten older I have learned to stay away from activities were my prosthetic leg may have a tendency to fall off. Before I started wearing the sleeve I had to chase my leg many times, and despite the humor in such situations, it is always a pain to have to hop after your own leg. Unfortunately most of time when my leg flies off, the people around me are either laughing hysterically (people that know me) or completely shocked and trying to figure out what is going on (people that don’t know me). In both cases, people are usually a little reluctant to fetch my leg and put it back on so hopping became a necessary skill. A skill I think I first learned in school during a very competitive game of kick ball. I knew how hard I could kick a ball and keep my leg on, but sometimes you get really into the game and you go for it and the leg doesn’t stay on. Of course then comes the decision, do I hop after my leg, or take a chance and try to make it to first and worry about the leg later. Most of the kids I went to school with knew I had a prosthetic leg, I mean it’s not really the kind of thing you can keep a secret when wearing gym shorts. Still even though they knew, the looks on their faces told me they were not prepared to see said leg fly off during kickball. Thankfully by the time I had made it to high school and wanted to play football, I had figured out that if I wore the sleeve I didn’t have to worry about my leg coming off and my one year of high school football was relatively uneventful as far as the “leg-flying-off” category goes. As an adult, I pick my battles very carefully, especially when I consider the price of a new prosthetic leg. I remember the confusion and semi-panic I caused the last time I went ice skating and my leg came off when I fell. Combine all that with the fact that I have the coordination of a drunken monkey and roller skating just didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Oh for the record, when faced with the decision to hop after your leg or try and hop to first. Always go for the leg! There is no easier target than a one-legged kid hopping to first in kickball. Lesson Learned!

I went to the mall this past weekend. There was much walking involved, which I was slightly less than excited about. As usual, I took as many opportunities as I could to find a comfortable spot to sit and rest for a minute or two. One of the guys I was with has some problems with one of his legs, and about mid way through our mall trip we had a brief conversation about it. I think its went something like “hey pops is your leg hurting yet?” “yeah, a little, is yours?” “yeah a little”, and that was pretty much all that was said. Truth be told, we were probably both in more pain that either of us let on. I try to suck it up as much as I can, and very rarely do I really complain about it. Even though the pain is very real, it is still relative, and I don’t really feel like I have any right to complain  or whine about it. It was a good trip to the mall, as good as the mall can be I guess, and I wasn’t so sore I couldn’t walk the next day so that was a big plus. I have a couple of funny stories from the weekend, but I will share those with you in pictures some other time.

I went to the Oklahoma Aquarium this weekend with a couple of friends to see the fish I caught a couple of years ago. The fish is part of the reason I decided to write a book, and start this blog. The story of the fish is probably going to be several post on here, because there really is a lot to the story. I will start the story with a few pictures of my fish and let you read a little more about it on a couple of different websites.

You can read the “official story” at the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife website. There is also a pretty good (yes I may be a little biased) article on ESPN Outdoors that you can check out. We will talk about the fish more in future post, and I will tell you why catching a catfish made me want to write a book.

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”                                                                              – George Bernard Shaw

The people that know me, or people that are around me for any length of time, know that I very rarely take things seriously. I try my best not to take things too seriously, but there are the occasional times when something gets to me. Like everyone else in life I have my moments. As far back as I can remember, I have made jokes at my own expense. I am sure that on some level you could consider that a coping mechanism to some extent. I have never really thought of it that way, but maybe that just means that as a coping mechanism it is working. The one thing I have never really been able to understand is what it is about people that make me feel comfortable enough to make light of myself. Sometimes I meet people and I never mention the obvious unless they bring it up. Then there are people that I will make jokes around without even really knowing them. I found myself doing this very recently, and I am not even sure why. I stopped worrying about what people thought of me a long time ago. I can’t change the way I look, so if people don’t accept me for who I am then it is on them, and not me. So I can’t see it as seeking acceptance, although it may be on some unconscious level.

I really think I will be visiting this topic more in the future. To be honest I am not even really sure where I am going with this at the moment, it’s just what I have been thinking bout today.

The more I write on here, the more I catch myself thinking about things I should mention. My mind is going ninety miles an hour sometimes and I forget half of the stuff I want to talk about. I used my phone for a while to make notes whenever I thought about something, but that didn’t work out all that great because my phone doesn’t have the best battery and isn’t always reliable. I figured I would try going old school and carry a notebook with me to jot down ideas while they were fresh. Hopefully my new 3″x5″ notepad will keep me from forgetting anything else.

Aside from having that Ace of Base song stuck my head for three days, this weekend was pretty good. Some of our family came to visit, so there was a lot going on all weekend. I did a fair amount of chasing, and being chased by, a herd of small people so by last night I was ready to get off my feet for a while.

I think by now most of my friends and some of my family know about this site, and the book I want to write. I mentioned the idea to my Mom about six months ago and really didn’t go into much detail. She of course told me that I should do it and it would be great. I continued to think about it for a while, and then about six weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend. I told her what I had been thinking about, and after I put the idea out there it really started to sound crazy. Even though I had put a lot of thought into it, it sounded pretty wild when I started talking about it to other people. I still have those moments, where the whole idea seems crazy. I have recieved some pretty encouraging feedback from friends so that helps me feel like this wasn’t a crazy idea after all. I have a couple of ideas that I think I will try here, thanks to some feedback from a couple of you. You should hang arund and see where this crazy train goes.

I have been going through a lot of my baby stuff lately. I am trying to get some information from the hospital that did the surgeries on my hands. I was very young when they did the surgeries, so I don’t really remember my hands pre-surgery but I have a few pictures like this one that I think are pretty interesting.

I have been writing down a lot of notes lately. When I first started this, I had some ideas but I wasn’t really sure exactly I was going with it. I am still not entirely sure, but the more I write about things, the more I think about things I would like to share. It has kind of opened up a flood gate that has been closed for about thirty years. Aside from maybe two people I don’t really ever talk about my differences unless I am asked about them. Honestly I don’t really even think about it a lot of times, until someone says something or does something to remind me. I think at times I may be too well adjusted, to the point that I ignore the fact that I am different instead of embracing it. It is kind of hard to ignore things when you are writing about them on a regular basis though.

On a lighter note, there was an article today on digg about 5 famous people with missing fingers  that I thought was kind of interesting.

I am always amazed at some of the people I meet. I never really know what to expect from people upon meeting them for the first time. Most of the time, people are making eye contact and don’t notice anything out of the ordinary until they go for the hand shake and I guess that can be a shock (I will tell you another funny story about a shocking handshake some other time). I recently had a person come to where I work to meet me. A gentleman I would guess in his early fifties walks into my office and introduces himself. He works for a local telecom service and would like to see if I am interested in using their company for all of our phone related needs. As he walks in I stand up to greet him, extend my hand and mid shake he looks down and says “what happened to your hand?” which catches me off guard every time. Those were the first words this guy said to me. I don’t even get a hello first, just how about those hands. I give the guy my short answer, because at this point I don’t even know his name so I don’t really feel the need to go into my life story. He then proceeds to tell me about a guy he knew one time that had something wrong with his arm, or something like that. He pretty much lost me right out of the gate. I only give him a couple of seconds of story time before I reply with “and what can I do for you today?” which kind of catches him off guard. So far this meeting is off to a bad start.

I realize that it is human nature to be curious about people or things that are different. I am curious myself when I see someone that is different from most people. I also know that there is a right and wrong way to ask questions. The guy in my office obviously did not know the right way to ask questions. I personally would never walk up to someone I had never met and point out something that was wrong with them and ask them why they were like that, but that’s just me. It doesn’t happen like that too often, but occasionally I meet someone and those are the first words out of their mouth. I always find that a little amusing.

Saturday night I went down to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the UFC fight with a couple of friends. Aside from being completely let down by “the Prodigy” and a somewhat less than friendly special guest, it was a pretty good night. We sat at the tall tables, which always sucks for me, because I am short plus gravity tends to kick in when I sit with my leg dangling for extended periods of time. About half way through the night I go to get down off my high stool and take a much needed rest room break and I can’t get my leg on all the way. Prosthetic limbs are learning experience no matter how old you get. I have had mine for over thirty years and I still forget that there are just some things that never change. I know that if I don’t pay attention to the sock that I wear with it that I can have issues with my stump swelling and not fitting right. I know this. Still, there are times when I don’t pay attention and it comes back to bite me. I had been sitting on this stool for a couple of hours, and naturally I kicked my leg off a little bit so it would reach the rings on the stool and I sit comfortably. The downside to this is sometimes when I go to put it back on it doesn’t want to go on and all kinds of awkard things can happen. So half way through the night, I jump off my stool and as soon as feet hit the floor I realize that my leg is not wanting to go on. The only thing I can really relate this to is when your leg goes to sleep and get up to walk and can’t feel anything. The only thing you can really do in that situation is give it a few minutes and see what happens. So I play it off. I stretch a little bit, ask one of the guys how long the line is and just kind of stand there at the table until I can get my leg back on. I am sure most of the time people never notice that anything is going on. Even though it can be a painful process, I tend to not make a big deal out of it.

That actually reminds me of how my old boss found out I had a prosthetic leg. I will save that story for another day though.