[Cartoonist and curmudgeon Al Capp lost his leg in a
trolley accident at the age of nine.]
Al Capp, “My Well-balanced Life on a Wooden Leg,” Life, 23 May 1960, p. 140.
Adults, on the other hand, are embarrassed if they are
caught looking at my wooden leg. If they are strangers, they look guiltily
away. If they are not, they hastily talk about something else.
But nobody ever handled the situation with greater
aplomb than the waiter to whom I gave my breakfast order as I lay in bed one
morning in the Savoy Hotel in London. As he was taking my order, he caught
sight of the shoed and stockinged leg that peeped out from under the bed. He
stared. Suddenly he realized that I was watching him. He finished writing down
the order, then looked me straight in the eye and said, “Very good, sir. And
what will the other gentleman have?”