Disability doesn't limit lover of life

A friend of a friend knows this guy, David Morris, who he says I should do a story on. He has some physical disabilities, I am told, but they don't hold him back at all; he's a regular guy who is an inspiration to everyone he meets.

So we set up an interview at the offices of Omni Brokerage, the investment real estate firm in the south end of the valley where Morris works. I arrive first, wondering exactly what disabilities we're talking about here, and then Morris walks in and it's obvious. He has short arms. His hands hang at chest level, about where your elbow should be.

"I have TAR syndrome. I was born with it," Morris explains, anticipating my obvious first question as we shake hands. "TAR stands for a very complicated medical term." (Thrombocytopenia with absent radius, to be exact, an extremely rare genetic condition with an incidence of just 0.42 per 100,000 live births. To get it is like hitting the Powerball lottery, only in reverse.)

TAR doesn't just mean you go through life without forearms; it also condemns you to a low blood platelet count, meaning bleeding is hard to control and interior varicose veins can be a problem. And in Morris' case it also means you are born without kneecaps, so your legs are slightly twisted and you run with a slight list.

If you or I woke up tomorrow with TAR, we'd pull up the covers and refuse to get out of bed.

Not Morris. He's taking a break from his duties as an accounting specialist at Omni for our interview. Then it's back to the books. And after work, there's no telling what he might do. Maybe play a rousing game of soccer, or hop on his bicycle with the specially equipped extra long handlebars for a ride through the woods, or do a little backpacking, or some noncontact kickboxing, or tackle a ropes course, or go skydiving.

Morris has done all of the above in his first 33 years, along with a whole bunch of other things a lot of people with regular-length arms and the normal allotment of platelets have not.

Not bad for a guy who can't tie his own shoes.

"I can put my socks on. I've figured that one out," he says. "But tying my shoes — I can't quite stretch that far."

As he says this, he casts a sly look down at his shoes. They have shoelaces, which are tied, but they are also slip-ons, which means he can take the shoes on and off without touching the laces.

Morris smiles. There's more than one way to keep your shoes tied.