FamiLee Life

Growing Up Bionic

Check out this NYTimes graphic story on the development of a bionic foot. I find this sort of technological advancement fascinating because, well, I grew up in a bionic family. You might laugh when you read this statement but it's true. Okay, here is the complete story.

Around the time of the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea and prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, my father at age 13 years or so was in a train accident that led to the loss of his left forearm and hand. The incident that led up to this tragic event is an amazing moral story but it's not relevant to this story. Anyway, his left arm was amputed just below the elbow. Despite this handicap, my father made it through the Korean War, attended art college, got married and had a child, immigrated to America, and made a success of his life. It's truly a story of resilience.

A few years after immigration, my middle brother and I were born two years apart. For us, dad having one arm was just a fact of life. We never saw it as a disability and he never treated it as a disability. By all appearances, it never slowed him down. He cut the lawn, renovated the house, rode a bicycle, drove a car, went ocean fishing, and all the rest. Of course, that said, he did have some accomodations that made life easier, including some nifty gadgets oftentimes invented by him.

The thing that stood out the most, not surprisingly, was the prosthetic arm that my dad used. For most of his life (and still today), he just had a fake arm made of plastic and rubber that simulated the look of a real arm. It didn't bend or anything fancy. Nothing bionic at all. In fact, my father owned a few of these "arms" and I once played a joke on my brother using a spare arm. My brother was sleeping on the couch and I snuck up on him with the arm. I gently started to stroke his face with the prosthetic arm until he awoke. Let's just say he freaked out for a moment before he chased me into hiding in my bedroom. Ah, childhood.

Well, at some point during my adolescent years, my father found himself unemployed and we were living pretty tight. How tight? Ever see your breath form vapor clouds in really cold weather? Well, we used to go to bed seeing our breath because the heat was turned down so low. But I digress. During this economic downturn in my family, some government office related to disability services (SSI?) offered my father a new bionic prosthetic arm that could pick up on neural charges in the elbow to bend the fake fingers to make a grip. Well, not being one to turn down something expensive and free, my dad got one of these bionic arms.

I must say, it was pretty basic (by today's standards) but cool too. In the end though, he never used it much because he had gotten accustomed to just using one arm. Plus, the bionic arm was really heavy and it put an unnecessary strain on his back and shoulders. So after a couple of years of on and off again usage, he went back to the fake prosthetic arm.

Still, it was amazing to see a real life bionic arm after all those years watching the Six Million Dollar Man. After all, how many kids can say they had a bionic dad, even if only for a few years.

So, seeing this new graphic story about a new bionic foot is exciting and inspiring. I know my father won't be getting a new bionic arm at this stage in his life, but some other deserving man or woman will - likely returning Iraqi War veterans. Their children will surely have wonderful, reminiscent filled memories as I did growing up bionic.

Posted by richlee at October 4, 2006 06:13 AM