Why are you wearing shorts?
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There's a lady whom I've seen around town walking her dog. She looks like she's in her late 30s, and attractive.
She has a prosthetic left leg. I've seen her twice and her skirt is long enough that I can't tell if it's above, or below the knee.
So, I was wondering why she dresses that way. Not that I'm offended, for goodness' sake, it's just that I find it odd.
Then I saw a video of Rep Brian Mast - he's a bilateral amputee and saw that he's wearing shorts. Again, I thought it odd.
An explanation:
Joey Jones (also an amputee) responded:
"Reasons why we rarely wear jeans/suit pants:
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The valve to adjust how an above knee prosthesis fits is located at the bottom of the socket close to where knees used to be. We have to adjust the fit almost every time we stand up from sitting more than 5 or 10 minutes
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there are at least 8 exposed screws on each knee joint. They snag and rip any material that comes in contact with them.
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In the summer especially, we sweat heavily in the sealed liners under our prosthetic legs. We have to sit down and take each leg off and dry it out. We can do that while keeping our shorts on if we need to do it in public. Otherwise, we’d have to drop long pants to do it.
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Walking on prosthetics requires tricking the brain into believing something is there (a foot touching the ground) that it can’t feel or control. With our peripheral vision we get confirmation of our legs swinging and landing as we walk. Pants mask this tremendously and we fall.
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Our legs free swing. There is no force helping propel the lower leg forward beyond swinging our hips. The weight and wind resistance of pants can cause our feet to swing short and make us stumble and fall much more often.
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Lastly and most importantly, we wear shorts because we want to. If it bothers you, you probably needed more mommy and daddy time growing up, I’m really sorry you didn’t get it. But don’t blame @BrianMastFL and I (sic). It’s not our fault.
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