Born Just Right

by Jordan Reeves

  Each year, a small group of kids get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend a week with the team to learn how to improve their softball skills. But it’s so much more than that. It wasn’t really a camp. The whole week was an experience. I also got to see and do some really fun things in Southern California. We saw dolphins, explored parks and beaches, and even spent a VIP day at Disneyland! But the biggest, most fun part was on the last day of the camp when we all got to participate in a big softball game with a huge crowd at a baseball stadium. Hearing my name called out as I walked up to the plate and making a base hit was unreal. There were people with signs in the stands cheering for me! I made friends during the kids’ camp who I’ll never forget. I also have new mentors I can look up to. Even better, the WWAST started inviting kids back for a reunion each year. The kids meet each year in Branson, which is another spot in Missouri that is only a three-hour drive from us!

  Each and every trip I take is a new experience that helps me see the world as a bigger place. I get to meet so many cool people along the way.

  7

  INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN/PROJECT UNICORN

  I guess you could say I have been designing all my life. Working with Mr. David really sparked my interest in design and how things are built and how they work. But what I didn’t realize was that all those experiences with prosthetics set me up to learn how my thoughts on design could lead toward some really nontraditional ideas. One of my travel opportunities gave me a chance to spend a week in San Francisco for a camp called Superhero Cyborgs. I was invited to join four other kids with limb differences to learn about design. I didn’t even realize I loved design before I had this experience! The camp’s codirector, Kate Ganim, issued a challenge that took my life in directions I never could have imagined. We were asked a simple question: If you could build something for your little arm that helped you become a superhero, what kind of superhero would you be?

  ARE YOU A DESIGNER?

  You might be surprised to find out you’re a designer in the making. If you have done any of these things, you might want to give designing a try:

  • Created slime

  • Built with Legos

  • Designed and created jewelry

  • Designed your own buildings and structures in Minecraft

  • Played with bubbles or balloons

  • Drawn pictures

  • Played with clay

  • Created an outfit in an unusual or different way

  • Taken a regular household item and turned it into a toy or something different

  • Cooked a meal with or without directions (or a little bit of both)

  • Creativity in ANY form can lead to design!

  Our first day was focused on learning about one another and understanding how to brainstorm. My friend Sydney and I decided we really wanted to be able to shoot something out of our little arms. Syd chose water, and I chose glitter.

  The camp gave us a chance to think up our designs without our parents in the room. I’m pretty sure that’s why I was able to get away with the glitter idea. My mom was never very crafty, so she didn’t really let me buy messy stuff before going to this camp. Once she found out I was going to work with sparkles, she couldn’t really do anything other than roll her eyes (with a smile on her face).

  Superhero Cyborgs happened at an amazing building along the San Francisco water. Autodesk, a company known for 3-D design software, hosted us. We got to see all the different 3-D design work they do and even got to visit a supersecret robot area! Autodesk is printing things as big as bridges and as small as skin cells! I’d never had a chance to see so many different types of ideas in one place. People can actually do this as a career! It totally shifted what I thought I wanted to do when I grow up.

  Each morning, we would send the parents away and build our concepts or prototypes. We took casts of our arms, like I do with Mr. David, but we also used 3-D scanners to build our designs around the shapes of our arms on a computer. The camp counselors taught us how to use a 3-D design program and build our own ideas. I had never done anything like it before. After our camp activities, we would go on small adventures around San Francisco. We had to climb this huge hill to get there each day. It was exhausting, but we were able to see so much of the city. San Francisco is so different from where I live! I decided before we left that San Francisco is one of my favorite places. This wasn’t the first time I had a chance to visit the city, but it was the first time I really felt like I was living there instead of just being a tourist.

  Besides the awesome experience of hanging out in San Francisco, it was so fun to see my designs come to life in a totally new way, different from what I had ever experienced before. If you’ve written something on a computer and printed it out, there’s something really cool about seeing your work on paper. Think of how amazing it can be when you design a thing on a computer, and then you can watch a 3-D printer actually create that thing in real life. Instead of ink, 3-D printers use really thin layers of melted plastic to build exactly what you created on your computer.

  As I worked on my idea to shoot glitter from my arm, I learned one of the most important lessons of being a designer: failure. I really hate messing things up. (I got that from my mom.) But when you are designing an idea, you have to mess up. You can’t design an idea without failure.

  I finally came up with my first big solution: a starburst design that wrapped around my arm. I used five plastic air bulbs and put plastic glove fingertips on top of each bulb. I poked a hole in each glove tip so air could puff out. Then I attached Nerf gun bullets on top of each bulb. I cut off the top of each bullet and filled it up with glitter. Finally, I attached a string around all the air bulbs, put the starburst around my arm, pulled the string, and . . .

  Glitter just kind of spilled out. It was a cool glitter cannon, but not cool enough. I knew I wanted to keep working!

  On the last day of our camp, we all got to show off our inventions to people who work at Autodesk. It was so much fun, and I ended up spreading glitter on one of the camp counselors who helped me learn how to use a 3-D printer. It was so funny! I also got to introduce my invention with an official name: Project Unicorn. I came up with the name when I was thinking about my work with glitter. To me, unicorns are happy and sparkly. So why not include unicorns in my project? With that name and after discovering how much fun it is to shoot glitter, there was no turning back!

  PROJECT UNICORN

  The Superhero Cyborgs camp wasn’t totally over after I got home. I was assigned a design partner who I was supposed to work with to keep making my design better. All the kids involved in the camp were given different design partners and three months to try to come up with bigger and better ideas for our superhero projects.

  I was partnered with a designer named Sam Hobish. Sam is an industrial designer with a side of graphic design. He volunteered to work with me while he was working at Autodesk. He’s moved away from San Francisco, but we’re still working together. He’s like a brother who is older than my brother. He also makes me laugh.

  Sam and I met over Google Hangouts every Friday after school. We brainstormed and worked over our computers to come up with new ideas. Sometimes Sam would print stuff out and send it to me in the mail, and I’d work on trying to improve the idea. I hit some big walls when we realized we couldn’t build my idea out with any kind of traditional-looking 3-D printed helper arms. We needed to do something different. I didn’t need a replacement hand—I needed a glitter blaster!

  I posted some of my experiences from camp and the building process on YouTube. My mom was taking pictures of my meetings with Sam and sharing them to her blog and to social media sites. He and I were just brainstorming about ways to work with my idea. For a while, we thought we were going to build an arm that looked like an arm. But after a few concepts didn’t work out, we stepped away and thought outside the box of what my arm could look like. It’s kind of amazing how well we worked together since we’d never met in person. Vid
eo chats are cool like that.

  Sam and I were working hard and taking all kinds of notes, photos, and videos. At some point, a journalist asked to interview me about my work, and it ended up becoming an article on a website. Suddenly, during my spring break from school, a YouTube video of me showing off my glitter cannon was all over the place. I was interviewed by all kinds of news websites and television stations. I was so excited when there were articles about my invention on the Nerdist website and on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. Kid President actually tweeted about me. When I saw that, I ran around the house in circles screaming with excitement!

  Getting the chance to see my idea online and receiving attention was a lot of fun. It was a chance for me to talk about limb differences in a fun way. Two-handed kids can’t shoot glitter like I can! I created something fun that limb-different kids can enjoy. All the two-handed kids and adults I talked to wanted to learn more and see how it worked! I had young kids tell me they were jealous of my little arm. How amazing is that?

  SHARING FAR AND WIDE

  That little burst of attention was just the beginning for me and Project Unicorn. Sam and I were still working on new ideas when we found out all the Superhero Cyborgs kids had a chance to present our work at Maker Faire Bay Area. That’s one of the biggest events in the country that lets adults and kids show off the stuff they’ve created. Knowing we were presenting to Maker Faire, Sam and I worked really hard on coming up with a new design that could shoot glitter faster than my old glitter cannon. Plus, I had a chance to go back to San Francisco!

  When I met up with Sam in San Francisco a day before Maker Faire, it was the first time we had ever met in person. It felt like we’d always known each other. The way we talked over Google Hangouts was totally the same way we talked to each other in person. We are really silly together. I guess that’s what you would expect if you’re working on a project that shoots glitter!

  Instead of a starburst design, Sam and I came up with a long unicorn horn that fit on my arm. Glitter can shoot right out of the end of the horn. The invention didn’t look like a hand at all, and that’s just the way I liked it. We used little tubes of glitter that were like bullets. To get the glitter to spray out, a plastic tube is attached to the horn and connected to a compressed-air can. Compressed air is the stuff you find at an office-supply store that is used to help clean computer keyboards. It has a strong spray of air, but it isn’t strong enough to hurt someone if they get hit with glitter in the face! Compressed air is SO much better than just pulling a string and trying to get the air to puff out the glitter. Sam came up with an idea where I’d have extra glitter bullets on a sleeve that I wore on my arm and another collection of them on my leg. That gave me the chance to reload glitter as quickly as possible. It also made me look extra tough! I was a real superhero.

  The hardest part was getting the glitter into the little tubes. My mom was in charge of that part. I think that’s really funny, since she didn’t like glitter and suddenly she was in charge of loading it into small containers. She ended up spilling it all over the place. I think this was the beginning of a new life for us. There always seems to be a little bit of glitter on our clothes. I’m not complaining! It’s just a part of our world now.

  Each of my other Superhero Cyborgs camp friends and I got to give five-minute talks on a main Maker Faire stage where people showed off their work all day. Everywhere you walk at the Faire, you see people showing off cool ideas. It really is like show-and-tell at school. The Maker Faire show-and-tell version is way bigger and includes so many adults. There were people walking around dressed up as robots and dinosaurs. There were displays and crafts. I wish I could have spent even more time there!

  One of the things Sam and I figured out while we practiced for the Maker Faire demonstration was that the size of the glitter matters. When the glitter is smaller, it doesn’t stick as much to the glitter cannon. The smaller glitter also seems to be able to wash off of hands and clothes easier. Sam bought a bunch of different types of glitter, and all of it was too chunky. It didn’t spray well. My mom had to go on a hunt around San Francisco for new glitter. Somehow, there was a type of glitter she found at Walgreens that worked perfectly.

  During the Maker Faire presentation, I got to spray the glitter on one of the people who works at Autodesk right after my friend Sydney had sprayed him with water. The glitter really stuck on him, and it was so funny. I had kids running up to me afterward asking if I could spray them with glitter. Everyone I talked to about Project Unicorn laughed and smiled. I realized, You can never be sad with sparkles. So many people were paying attention to my work because this idea was a lot of fun, and it happened to work really well for a little arm! Something that makes me different made it possible for me to be an inventor who sees things differently. I also think all the years I have spent working on helper arms with Mr. David helped a lot. I was a part of the maker world before realizing it!

  After Maker Faire, I was invited to attend a maker health event in Washington, DC, through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I got to meet all kinds of adults who have invented new ways to help people with disabilities, and others who have great ideas that help people who are sick. Project Unicorn was the only project presented by a kid. I got to speak to all kinds of leaders and spread my fun and glitter. A very important person allowed me to spray him, even though he was wearing a really nice suit!

  While I was in DC, I also attended the National Maker Faire. It was another big show-and-tell for all ages. It wasn’t quite as big as the one in California, but I got to meet so many people and learn so much. It was also the first time someone recognized me from my work! A woman who was presenting at a table asked to take pictures with me. That was so strange and cool at the same time. I walked around with Project Unicorn, showing it off to anyone who was curious. I ended up winning an Editor’s Choice Award for my idea!

  Every step along the way, my mom was sharing stories on the Born Just Right website. She also shared photos and videos on social media. I think all that sharing helped me get even more opportunities to talk about Project Unicorn and tell people why I love design.

  While Sam and I continued to meet over Google Hangouts and work on making Project Unicorn even better, I kept getting invited to speak and share the project. I’ve visited community groups in my town where I presented to adults. I’ve also talked to different groups of kids, like local Boy Scout troops, and even to an entire school during an assembly in St. Louis! It is so cool to share what it is like to have a limb difference and all the fun ways I can use design to take advantage of my little arm. I always tell kids and adults that design is something anyone can learn. We all have good ideas hiding in our heads. You just have to stop and think and create. I had no idea 3-D printing lets you be so creative until I got to learn how it works. Now when I have an idea, I can jump into Tinkercad (my favorite 3-D design tool) and try to make my idea real. Not every idea works, but I love being able to see my ideas come to life on a 3-D printer.

  Because I keep working with Sam on projects, Autodesk and Dremel—which is a power tool and 3-D printer company—teamed up to donate a 3-D printer so that I could have my own. That means I don’t have to wait for Sam to print out the ideas he and I work on. We can just share computer files! I even got a donation from another organization called the Awesome Foundation that helped pay for all the special plastic, called filament, that I use to print things.

  Even though I use the printer and software for new prosthetic designs, I also like to play around with other designs to see if they will work. For example, I created a fun cell phone holder that looks like a donut. I even created custom hearts with the first initial of each kid in my class for Valentine’s Day.

  BIG OPPORTUNITIES

  All these creations, speaking opportunities, and inventions gave me a chance to visit Walt Disney World again! This time, I visited the park to receive a special award given by the Walt Disney Company. Two other girls and I won Dream B
ig, Princess awards. Disney gave me the Dream Big, Princess Innovator Award for the ways I’d worked to help more people understand limb differences and create cool things. We went up on a big stage in front of a huge room of writers to accept our awards.

  I got to meet some really nice people during that special Disney trip, and I made new friends. It’s amazing getting to know other kids who are doing big things. Meeting the other award winners showed me how any kid can take experiences that matter to them and make those experiences into something big.

  I am shocked that I have had the chance to visit so many cool places and talk to so many people about an idea that started with glitter. I mean, look at this book! Can you believe it? I have said it time and time again—if you try really hard, you can make a change. I feel like I prove that every day. By speaking up, I can change how you think about limb differences and maybe other disabilities. Everything is possible if you believe in yourself and have support from friends and family.

  THE RACHAEL RAY EXPERIENCE

  If you think a trip to Walt Disney World was the ultimate experience for Project Unicorn, you would be surprised to hear I had another really amazing opportunity. It gave me a chance to make a secret trip to New York City!

  I was invited to take a version of Project Unicorn to the Rachael Ray Show. Rachael Ray is a chef who has her own show that airs across the country. That alone sounds crazy and cool, but the visit came with a twist: I got to present my invention to the entire team from the show Shark Tank. The people on that show watch presentations and then decide if they want to give their own money to help businesses grow. The “sharks” ask tough questions and decide if a business can get loans. I was given the chance to share Project Unicorn with the sharks by giving a one-minute speech on the Rachael Ray Show. Two other kid inventions were also part of the show.