He climbs on a step stool-like chair in the lunchroom. He washes his feet with a baby wipe, then uses his toes to unwrap and plunge straws into juice boxes, eat a sandwich or pick up Cheetos. At home, he sits on the counter top to do dishes when it's his turn.

His classroom chair is higher than his desk, so he's not wrenching his hips to do schoolwork. He's also learning to use the computer via Morse code. He types code with foot pedals, which the Darci computer program translates into letters. That, Rogers believes, will protect his hips and back, while allowing him to become computer proficient.

But on other stuff, Alex wants no exception.

He insists on joining the class in learning to play the recorder, a short clarinet-like instrument, even after Sherrie Dahl, a certified occupational therapy assistant, tried to find adaptations or alternatives that might be easier for him to manipulate. Alex wouldn't hear of it, she says.

"He doesn't want to be different than anyone else," says Karen Foote, Alex's math teacher. "He wants to fit in."

"I don't think kids even recognize (his differences) anymore," Jenny Brotherson says.

Alex does karate, glides on those tennis shoes with wheels in the heels, and plays soccer and kickball and four-square at recess and day care. He even tells of run-ins with schoolyard bullies. Sometimes he stands his ground, he says. Sometimes he loses.

When the family goes out, Jenny Brotherson says adults are most apt to stare. "Kids will come up and say, 'Where's his arms?' and he'll say, 'I was born without them.' But grown-ups ... they don't ask. He'd rather have someone come over and say, 'Where's your arms?' than point."

As a preschooler, Alex was fitted with artificial arms at Shriners Hospital. But he was too little to understand the nuances of controlling them with subtle shoulder movements, his mom says. He may try them again in a few years.

Meanwhile, he continues to do things his way.

"Alex does not view himself as handicapped," his mom says. "We'll see people who are ... and he'll say, 'Wow, look at that person over there.' It doesn't dawn on him he's in the same category."

Alex describes himself as a happy, nice kid who likes to help people. And, he says, "I can do different stuff you can't do."

Alex dreams of becoming a police officer or an attorney — his mom says he has the gift of argumentation — or a number of other professions.

"I hate to be the person to tell him he can't ... (because) he's going to do it anyway," Jenny Brotherson says. "He just adapts. He makes his world what it needs to be for him."

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E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com