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From WNYC Studios, you're listening to Snap Judgment Classic.

Now, I'm excited because the best ass-wifers are the ones you don't see coming and know. But you know one knows a beat down. Like Snap Judgment's Joe Rosenberg. Joe, take it away.

Anthony Robles' story starts unlike most people's stories. Actually, really, truly on the day he was born.

Well, you know, the story that my mom told me, you know, she was 16 years old when she was about to have me. And she tells me that when I came out, she could tell right away even though she was kind of loopy from the medication. She could tell right away that something was wrong. Just how quiet it got and how the doctors were looking around.

And they basically, they rushed me right out of the operating room. They didn't allow my mom to see me, didn't allow her to hold me anything.

And so my mom, you know, she's sitting there just asking the nurses what's going on. Where's my son? And no one's telling her anything. She didn't even get to look at my face. And apparently they went to my grandparents first because they didn't know how to handle the situation. Everyone was in shock.

And it was my grandparents ultimately that that broke the news to my mom that her son was missing his right leg.

And little baby Anthony, he wasn't missing his right leg in the way you might not only think of there being like half of the thigh where you know they can put a prosthetic.

Instead, there was simply no leg at all all the way up to the hip socket. In fact, he didn't have a right hip either.

As soon as she heard, she tells me that her first reaction was I just want to see him. You know, she said as soon as she saw me as soon as she was able to hold me, it didn't matter.

You know, she didn't see my missing leg. She told me that she, she told me she saw perfection.

Anthony grew up in Arizona not seeing himself as any different from any of the other kids. He says when they learned to crawl, he learned to wiggle. When they learned to walk, he learned to hop. And no one thought much of it.

And so, you know, growing up with my siblings, I didn't think it was a big deal. I honestly saw it as something as simple as, you know, my sister's a girl, I'm a boy. She has two legs, I have one. That was it. That's how it was in our family.

And if you're picturing Anthony doing normal everyday things, only more slowly, don't. Using crutches, he was fast, really fast.

Now I can run an eight minute mile, but I remember once on the playground, you know, I grabbed the green four square ball. That was the good one. And one of the kids, he runs up behind me, slaps it out of my hand.

And he takes out running. He's like, it's mine. And so I just take off dead sprint on my crutches to catch him. And then you just see him look back over his right shoulder. And he sees me. And then his eyes get pretty wide. And I'm just barreling down the black top atom.

So he takes off faster. But by that time I was already on him and I took him down with my crutch.

But Anthony's unselfconsciousness about having one leg, it didn't last. For one thing, as he got a little older, he was like any other boy growing up.

He wanted to be popular, to feel normal. And that got harder. But maybe the biggest reason was his dad, Ron.

You know, I just noticed kind of little things of how he treated me differently than my siblings. You know, he'd always call my brother Nicholas, me, you know, my son. And he never called me that ever. And I just, I felt like he was meaner to me for some reason. And I kind of start to hide from him.

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