Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station. This is part of our Young Voices Series for Girl Power: You Are Enough. We are always looking for more writing from YOU! Make sure you follow us on instagram at @GirlPowerYouAreEnough and on Facebook here.
By Julia Betancourt
I wasn’t going to talk about my residual limb when I visited my kindergarten teacher in her classroom. At least, not until a small blonde girl came and tugged on my skirt while I was greeting my former teacher, Ms. Restrepo.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked.
“Oh,” I replied. I stared at my left arm, which extended to just below the elbow—the “hand” she was referring to, nicknamed “Army,” meaning little arm. “I was born like this,” I said, lying to her because I didn’t want to go into the extraneous story about the accident. I turned to face a boy and his three friends.
“Does it hurt?” he wondered. I shook my head.
“How can you write?” another child yelled.
By this point in time, I noticed that most of the class had gathered, and they were all asking me questions I didn’t want to answer. However, I couldn’t just tell the children to leave me alone, because they were six. Furthermore, if I told them to leave me alone, they might be afraid of other people with amputations. Based on their curiosity, most of them probably hadn’t even seen anyone with a limb difference. Whatever I did now could potentially affect the way they thought about amputees for the rest of their lives. Continue Reading…