Lily Ostrom '21 was born with what she thought was an embarrassing genetic mutation - but now she sees the world differently.
The kids in school used to tease her. Ostrom looked different - and different is always a target. One day, though, at the doctor's office of all places, Ostrom discovered her uniqueness might actually be a superpower. In the lobby of the doctor's office, there was a bowl of stickers. Good boys and girls were entitled to one sticker at the end of their checkup. Ostrom wanted the entire bowl's worth. At first, she was told no, until a doctor interjected...
"Look at her eyes. Give her as many stickers as she wants!"
Like most babies, Ostrom was born with two blue eyes. One turned brown, the other didn't. It's called heterochromia - a genetic quirk caused by a scarcity of the pigment needed to turn the second eye brown (her dad has the same color blue eye; her mom as the same shade of brown). The condition is more common in dogs, but very rare in humans - and the one blue, one brown combination is rarest of all. It's found in fewer than 1 in 100,000 people.
The teasing didn't bother Ostrom as much when she started batting her eyes for free stuff. The stickers were just the beginning. But beyond that - her mom taught her that "what makes you different is what makes you special." Less than one half of one percent of all Americans have two different colored eyes... that doesn't make Ostrom weird, it makes her her.
Ostrom is majoring in psychology and would like to work as a behavioral therapist for children with autism. It's always been her passion to work with kids, and for nearly three years she's taught at the Children's Academy in Connecticut. Those kids - like the kids from when she was younger - often stare and ask silly questions. "Are you a vampire?" But now she tells them about her superpower... and encourages each student to embrace what makes them different. And if they can score free stickers with their own superpower, all the better.
"When I was younger, it was definitely harder for me to accept what made me different since people would always point it out. Now I'm at a place where I realize it's my normal, and that's a lesson I can share with kids. Honestly, I often forget I even have two different colored eyes!"