Uncanny | Sample

Yesterday, while I was waiting for my Sausage McMuffin with Egg in the Wal-Mart McDonald's (yes, I do know how classy that makes me sound), a man with a prosthetic leg came along with a little girl who was about eleven years old, probably his granddaughter. He was a very regular-looking Utah grandpa: polo shirt, khaki shorts, nondescript white running shoes, ankle socks.

In and of itself, the guy's prosthetic leg was not the weirdest thing about this guy. What made the scene completely uncanny was the fact that this fella's leg was not the rubbery, Crayola flesh-tone of most prosthetic limbs. Instead, it was tattooed with a patchwork of dusky American flags that swirled the main piston of the calf, climbed the knee and thigh, and disappeared into the hem of his shorts.

This left me wondering if there were any prosthetic legs available with the Union Jack or Maple Leaf or three bars of the French, Italian, or German flags. Are we, in the States, alone in our flag fetishes? Do people in other countries do things like this? Without a doubt this does not happen in Japan--their fake legs would end up looking like a case of very aggressive chicken pox.