In my experience it’s not all that out of the ordinary to spot a person who is missing, or has lost, a leg – or two. Understandable since there’s birth defects, accidents, war, disease and all manner of causes to which people lose their legs, or the use of their legs and so it doesn’t seem unusual to me that I see, on average, 1-2 people a week challenged by this. I’m sure there are even more who are wearing a prosthesis and I just don’t notice (which is too bad because gaining use of a prosthetic anything takes a Herculean effort deserving of a standing ovation … but that’s a story for another day).
Conversely, in my experience it’s not all that ordinary to spot a person who is missing, or has lost, an arm – or two. I don’t know why that is, it just is. All the reasons for losing arms are pretty much the same as those for legs wouldn’t ya’ think? So why do I so see people missing an arm only about once every six months? In my view, more arms appear to be missing, or useless, due to birth defects than any of the other causes and I’m wondering if there isn’t some sort of taboo against removing them – as though doctors fight a bit harder to save an arm than they do a leg. It’s just an observation that’s in no way based on medical fact. Just a feeling I’ve got.
I think I notice missing limbs more than the average person because I grew up with a Dad who was born missing his left arm from just above the elbow. The way the story goes is that my Grandmother took a spill down the stairs in the latter part of her pregnancy that caused my Dad to turn and get twisted in the umbilical cord. Theoretically the cord wrapped around his left arm fiercely enough that it pinched off the circulation causing the limb to wither and fall off. I disagree with this theory. I think the umbilical cord is likely the cause but I think it probably happened early in the pregnancy rather than later because his little body struggled valiantly to keep growing the arm for when he was born he had five tiny little finger-stubs growing at the end of the stump that would be his left arm. Had he lost the arm in 7th month (as the story goes) there would not have been sufficient time for this “regeneration” to take place. I think it happened while the arm was forming initially. The umbilical cord also wrapped itself around his neck causing him to born a “blue” baby. That combined with his missing limb and the fact that his entire body was caved in and withered on the left side (later they would discover that the lung on his left side was hopelessly collapsed also) caused the doctors to “throw him to the end of the bed” (to quote my Grandmother) and set to work on her. It’s wondrous that he survived at all. It’s a credit to my Grandmother that her “crippled” child went literally from March of Dimes poster child to being his high school’s quarterback and an all-conference player, a nightclub entertainer and eventually an engineer. My Mom says the first thing my Dad did when he met me was count all my fingers and toes. I can only imagine his relief.
Last night as I was sitting in the pub at a table by a window sharing a pitcher of beer with my kids and talking about this exact personal phenomenon of seeing an inordinate number of one-armed people, a little dark-haired boy of about 5 came merrily skipping down the sidewalk right in front of the bar’s window … he was laughing as he hopped over the outside tables and having a great time being his own best buddy. As he hopped over the table directly in front of our window I was startled to notice he was missing his left arm from the elbow down ……………………… and I nearly spilled my beer in my lap.
You’ve got my attention Dad but I need another sign to figure out the message.
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