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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Things you didn't know about amputees.
Mar 24, 2000 | Here is a reason I don't bowl. I suffer an irrational fear that one of my fingers will become stuck in the hole and the bowling ball will yank it off, and I will stand there watching the ball roll down the lane with my bloodied digit sticking out. Normally, I don't share my fears of accidental amputation with fellow bowlers, but at this particular bowling session it seems to fit right in with the conversation, for it's a pizza-and-bowling party hosted by a Bay Area amputee group called Stumps 'R Us.
"Stump" is not a derogatory term among these amputees. "Residual limb" is the p.c. term, but everyone here today says stump. As in, "Your stump will change size if you gain or lose weight" or "My daughter-in-law's Dalmatian is fascinated by his stump." In case you are wondering what they call us, we're TABs, which stands for totally able-bodied. "Or, less optimistically," quips one amputee, "temporarily able-bodied."
Stumps 'R Us founder Dan Sorkin, who invited me, wants me to meet one of the bowlers, a man named Alan Fisk, who was born with four stumps. I have never been introduced to anyone with arm prosthetics before. Do I shake his hook? Fisk doesn't extend it, so I don't reach for it. As it turns out, I wouldn't have been shaking his hook; I'd have been shaking his bowling attachment, and God only knows what the etiquette is there. (Golf and baseball mitt attachments are also available.)
Fisk steps up to bowl. He jams the plunger at the end of his attachment into one of the bowling ball finger holes. (One of the odd things about being an amputee is that you use words like "plunger" and "coupler" and "piston" to talk about your own anatomy.) By maneuvering his shoulder, Fisk can pull a cable that contracts the plunger and lets the ball go. He hefts the ball up onto his other arm prosthesis, and walks to the line on his leg prostheses and bowls a strike. This man handles himself with more grace and athletic prowess than I do with limbs intact. I am filled with awe and wonder and a fleeting thought that perhaps he doesn't need to use handicapped-parking spaces and will want to give his decals to me.
