About.

The cover that changed the question

A few years in, I got my first cosmetic prosthetic cover. I was astounded by how much it changed the way people approached me and engaged with me, and it changed almost overnight.

They stopped asking how I lost my leg. They started asking how it worked.

There is a real and positive social impact in changing the conversation from disability to design.

That shift happens before anyone says anything. The right cover changes an interaction before it begins, and it does something for your confidence and self-esteem on the way through. I wondered whether a t-shirt could do the same job.

So I made some.

What I'm trying to do

• Ignite conversations about design over disability.
• Indulge the dark humour of people living with a disability.
• Help people own their strengths and their weaknesses.
• Do something bigger than me.

And, you know, cash in on this tragedy.

I used to be an Uber driver

I use rideshare a lot. In a small city, if you have issues with mobility, it is indispensable. Drivers are people and people are curious, so I get asked about my leg constantly.

For a while I made up stories. Wildly implausible, but not impossible. Tiger attack while glamping in Cameroon. Bizarre boating accident. Practical joke gone wrong. I was always pleasant about it, and I let them ask follow-up questions about the size of the blimp, or the gator, or the cosplay convention.

One driver told me the imaginary tiger would have gone for my neck rather than my leg. Fair.

Then, while I'm getting out of the car, I ask whether they still want to know how I actually lost it. If they do:

I have never once marked a driver down for asking about my disability. I'd rather treat it as a chance to inform, educate, and amuse myself.

Prosthetico

Airports are a bitch. Bleep, bleep, bleep, every single time.

I was living in Spain for a few years, flying back and forth to Australia. My Spanish was shocking, because I was lazy. So at security I would announce that I had a prosthetico, and run my hand up and down my thigh to show them where the metal was. I always got a smile and a wave through. These guys, I thought, are extremely relaxed.

On my last flight out of Spain, same routine. Bleep, bleep, bleep. "Yo tengo un prosthetico." Hand up and down the leg.

The security officer said, "No. No. No. Tienes una prosthesis." Heavy emphasis on the "th".

So I asked her, in my terrible Spanish, what a prosthetico was.

She made what could only be interpreted as the international hand signal for a strap-on.

For three years I had been cheerfully explaining to airport security that I was wearing a strap-on big enough to set off the alarms.

The shirts

Four designs to open with, made with Lonely Kids Club. Each one has a story behind it, most of them involving a treadmill.

See the shirts