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By Lindsey Hilty

Staff Writer

Joke telling is all about the delivery, and 7-year-old Amelia Murphy has it down.

"Why did the chicken cross the playground?" she asked, straight faced, eyes raised just above her glasses.

"To get to the other slide," she said. "You know, the other side one?"

Her giggles filled the VanGorden Elementary School Tuesday, Nov. 18. The second-grader had just finished her school day and said the highlight was telling her classmates about a recent vacation to Florida.

"You would have thought we had the homecoming queen or Sarah Palin herself come to speak to them," said Wendy Harpring, Amelia's teacher. "They truly missed her being there. She just brings out the very best in everyone."

Pam Murphy said her daughter's fame is evident when they go out in public and someone always recognizes Amelia. During many of Amelia's 47 surgeries since birth, her hospital room has been filled with friends, family and even nurses who have fallen in love with the little girl.

Because of her Spina bifida, an incomplete formation of the spinal chord at birth, she has had 28 shunts replaced in her skull to help drain fluid. Other surgeries have been for her back, though the majority have been emergency trips to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Last year she missed 69 days of school and had to spend the summer catching up.

"It's a little scary and complicated," she said of surgery. "They have gas to put you to sleep that I'm a tiny bit afraid of."

But, for the most part, she said the repeated hospital trips are just an addition to her busy schedule of wheel-chair soccer, cheerleading and Brownies.

"I just don't put my mind on the medical stuff," she said.

Instead, she focuses on her dream of being a hip-hop dancer. She practices in her basement while singing rap.

And while Amelia has her squabbles with her sisters, Emma Murphy 12, and Claire Murphy, 9, she rarely gets grumpy or down. And if she is, her dad Brendan Murphy, makes her laugh, she said.

Wheeling around school in a wheel chair decorated with Christmas glass clings, Amelia sports leopard-print leg braces and polka-dot tights that fit inside a pair of Mary Jane shoes — a gift from a Lakota parent who heard how much Amelia wanted little girl shoes to wear with her braces.

"They're such a neat example of how everybody can make a big difference in somebody's life by doing one thing," Pam Murphy said.

In addition to her new shoes, Amelia said she is grateful for her family and her pets — a cat named Coffee and a dog Buddy who is attempting to pass service training and responds to sign language —which the entire family speaks because of the nearly four years Amelia couldn't speak.

"She is so special, because she includes everyone and is so accepting of others," said Stephanie Reynolds, an intervention specialist who works with Amelia on reading and memory recall. "In my classroom we have some different students in here, and she works so well with all of them and makes them feel special. She's just a bright light — she's just as sweet as can be. I love her giggle. It's just contagious."

Amelia's aid, Pat Burley, said the little girl has everyone under her thumb, but in a good way.

"Amelia is the kind of person — there was a little boy in our class that he wasn't playing with anybody and he was alone on the playground. She wheeled over and said 'Do you want to be my friend?' No every day he looks for her."

So many students want to be Amelia's friend, there is a list of who gets to stay in at recess if the temperature is too cold or too hot.

"She just lights up my day," she said. "I wish everybody could see life through Amelia's eyes."