Hey, Mister!

Kids just crack me up!  And for as much as I have desired for my entire life to live in the shadows of humanity passing by, my disability has drawn much unattended attention to me.

"Hey, Mister!  You lost your foot!"  The young man in question begins a frantic search of the bread section to figure out where it went.  I was just dying of laughter.  His mother dragged him off.

A little girl following along behind her mother had riveted eyes on my leg.  Then she shifted her bear to her other arm and pointed to my missing foot.  I nodded my agreement with her observation.  She looked around randomly and then lifted her right foot up and wiggled it at me.  I am not sure what she was thinking there but I laughed anyway.

One young lady got intensely in my face and had all manner of questions about my leg, how was the foot taken off, what did the doctor say, etc!  Oh my gosh - she was not going to let go of this conversation until her knowledge had been expanded well beyond her years!  I was very surprised and I rolled away wondering if she was headed for a life as a medical child prodigy!  I am just as curious about her and her future as she was about my leg!

The best one though was a little boy whom stopped me in our local Kroger's: Fred Meyers.  He stepped in front of me as I was trying to reach the garlic bread and greeted me with the now familiar, "Hey Mister!".

"You lost your foot!"
"What happened to it?"
"Why did it have to come off?"

At this point his mother has him by his neck and is apologizing profusely as she tries to drag him away.  I assured her that his curiosity was normal and he deserved answers.

So I explained to him in simple terms what had happened so recently.

"Well, when are they going to put it back on?"

So I then explained about artificial limbs and before I could explain how they work to this young man, his mother was now in a panic over her son's behavior and was apologizing profusely as he was dragged off out of his clothes she was pulling so hard.

Swede just burst out laughing!  As did I, it really was a funny scene.