Of all the different people with physical disabilities in the world that I try not to feel pity for but still do anyway, people with missing limbs are the ones that really tug at my heartstrings. I don’t really have a justification as to why, but something about a little girl with one arm running around a park trying to play with her friends but being physically limited by something she has no control over really breaks my heart. Yes, I know people in wheelchairs probably have it worse, but everyone feels bad for the wheelchair bound. Everyone always forgets about the poor people with missing limbs.
So yes, I got more than a little excited when a bunch of college students from Siena College designed and built a ‘Frozen’-themed prosthetic arm for a 9 year-old girl.
Ok so, blogger confessional, I went to Siena College, so I’m a tad partial. Mostly because, in the last month, the only two newsworthy things that Siena has done is hold a dog parade and become the defendant in a sexual assault case. We needed a W, and helping this little girl is exactly the W that myself and the rest of the world was looking for. My second confession? I didn’t even know we had an engineering program. The school only has like 3,500 students, so I’m not sure how an entire class of engineers snuck by me. Granted, I was an English major who decided freshman year that my mind wasn’t built for Friday classes, so they may have been hiding in one of those buildings I didn’t frequent very often. Wherever these kids were hiding, it’s still pretty awesome that they were able to create a tool to help a young girl that also wasn’t just a bland piece of hardware. Plus, she can grow out of it and eventually receive a new one that is less ‘Frozen’-themed. Because, sure, ‘Frozen’ is dope as shit when you’re 9, but may be a little less cool when you’re 30 and already hoping people won’t stare at you for your missing arm, let alone a replacement tool that is modeled after a 20 year-old kids movie.