cool super-robot leg

while waiting to pick up eleanor from kindergarten recently, peter and i hung out on the playground with other parents and siblings. we finally flagged down eleanor in a sea of tiny blue uniforms and white knee socks and headed home, but not before pete pointed out, "ha-ha, she doesn't have a leg -- look at her walk on that stick!" now imagine that being yelled in his very best gerald mcboom-boom voice about 15 feet from said woman. she wore long shorts and it appeared that her leg ended somewhere in the upper thigh area. her prosthetic was very thin and metallic (and actually pretty awesome looking), and she was so agile that he failed to notice it during the 30 minutes or so that we played near her earlier. her son was riding on her shoulders and if she heard peter (which i'm betting that she did), it didn't slow them down.

because both of our kids will keep asking the same question again and again, louder and louder, until they finally get some sort of response, i quickly bent down and pulled peter to me so i could hiss, "it's rude to point and yell at people. she was either born without her leg or it may have been removed because it was sick or hurt. she's wearing an artifical leg made by special doctors just for her. it's called a prosthetic. now let's get going." so peter, ever on the watch for bad guys, screamed, "but she's a monster!" and i started sweating and squeezing his little arm and thinking, "jesus christ, just shut up and move." of course, i was the only one with a problem. no one else cared or noticed. not the woman and her son, who were either oblivious or ignoring the three year old. not peter, who finds nothing (my breasts, his anus and what comes out of it, or the appearance/smell/fashion choices of strangers) off limits. it occured to me that the prosthetic was similar to the legs used by the runner oscar pistorius, which we all thought looked like cool super-robot legs. so i whispered, "it's a robot leg," and pete said something along the lines of, "ohhhhh, okay," because, as i've posted at least a few times, who doesn't love robots?