Fridays have always been Josh Carbajal’s favorite day of the week.

Now, it’s because Friday is game day for Pecos High School. But when he was a toddler, Fridays were the day his mother loaded her five sons into the car and took them to McDonald’s.

The Carbajal family didn’t go for the Happy Meal, although that was a nice bonus. The PlayPlace was the main event for five rambunctious boys. The Carbajal clan scarfed down their Chicken McNuggets like it was a race. The first one to finish was the first one to go down the slide. 

Josh, the second-youngest of the group, would chase his older brothers around, running circles around the Jungle Gym to see where they were. But every Friday without fail, a gaggle of kids would begin following Josh, too. They’d point at him, their heads reflexively snapping back and forth between their own parents sitting at the table and this strange kid who was blowing their toddler minds. 

“Where’s his arm?” they’d ask.

Terri Carbajal had prepared for this. Ever since the doctor examined her ultrasound and told her that her baby had suffered amniotic band syndrome in the womb – the damaged placenta surrounding the baby wrapping around its little arm, cutting off its growth – she’d known her baby boy would grow up facing looks and comments. But it still broke her heart when Josh shuffled up to her and asked, ‘What’s wrong with me?’

“People are going to make fun of you,” Terri told him. “Not because you’re a bad person or they don’t like you. But people are afraid of difference, so they address it in different ways. Sometimes they might make fun of you. Sometimes they might ignore you. But don’t take it personally.”

Instead, she said, just laugh it off. So every time a kid shouted, ‘Where’s his arm?’ Josh would make up a story, like a shark bit it off. Giggling, he’d turn toward his mom for approval, and she’d give him a thumbs-up and a smile. But mother and son were both acting for each other. Inside, Teri was enraged, not at the kids who simply didn’t know any better, but at their parents who did. And Josh, for all his jokes, was deeply insecure.

“In elementary school, I would try to hide my arm in pictures,” Josh said. “There were a lot of different things I’d do to not have someone look at me and be like, ‘Oh, that’s the highlight. He has one arm.’”

Even now, as a senior at Pecos High School, Josh walks a tightrope between embracing his difference and wanting to be treated the same. He lifts weights without a prosthetic, bench pressing and hang-clinging with one hand. His head coach, Tony Pallanez, ordered him a special squat bar that was easier to grip, but he refused to use it. Josh is almost allergic to special treatment, viewing it, at best, as a handout, and at worst, as a signal that he’s less than.

“He doesn’t do anything differently than anybody,” Coach Pallanez said. “If you didn’t actually see it, you couldn’t tell, because he doesn’t act differently. He’s one of the leaders of our team. He’s the guy that keeps the locker room straight and gets guys back in line. He’s the prototypical bell cow of our team.”

Because of his attitude, and given all he’s overcome, Coach Pallanez tried to nominate Josh’s story to Dave Campbell’s Texas Sports last summer. But Josh said no. He didn’t want any part of it. Ever since he was a toddler at that McDonald’s PlayPlace, he’s harbored a deep-seated fear that his identity will become ‘Josh Carbajal, the kid with one arm.’ Even after a year had passed and he agreed to the story, he joined my Zoom call for an interview and shifted the computer screen so that it cut off the side of his body with the missing arm. I wonder if that was a conscious choice, like when he used to hide his arm for pictures in elementary school, or if all those conscious choices he made as a child now play out unconsciously as a young man. Either way, it’s another example of the war that’s waged inside Josh Carbajal’s mind, a lifelong struggle between who he always has been and who he wants to be now. 

“I want to be an inspiration to other people,” Josh said. “I want someone to look at what I’m doing and say, ‘If he can do it, I have no excuse.’ And it doesn’t even have to be football. There’s no reason I should not do something when there’s a kid with one arm excelling at it.”

Josh knows this is the last year of his football career, and he’s at peace with that. Right now, he views football as a platform to inspire others, and college will give him different platforms to do the same. 

But football has also helped him tremendously. Which is funny, because originally, his mother didn’t even want him to play. She worried about the head injuries, and the exhaustion from running around for hours on end in the Texas heat, weighed down with pads. But Josh got his fair share of contact sports at home. His three older brothers constantly pinned him down, laughing, ‘You can’t do nothing!’ as they noogied his helpless body. Josh played basketball growing up, but he counted down the days until his mom would let him play football in seventh grade. Then he could take out his frustration with his brothers by tackling someone else, for a change. 

“I like going out there and hitting somebody,” Josh said. “In basketball, there are a lot of complicated rules. You can’t be rough. In football, you can be as reckless and physical as you want.”

Remember what Josh said about using football to inspire others? Well, sure, he knows that now. But in the beginning, football was simply an outlet for all the anger he felt at the world for giving him one arm. A simple, violent, carnal game where his only task was to find the ball carrier and hit him as hard as he could. For a long time, Josh tried to heal himself that way, toeing the line between physicality and outright recklessness, and constantly crossing it.

Josh was ejected in Week 1 of his senior season. But Coach Pallanez cites it as his favorite memory of Josh. Pecos held a massive lead on Clint Horizon, a game they’d eventually win 56-14. After another Pecos interception, the Horizon wide receiver shoved the defensive back from behind out of frustration. Josh, initially rushing toward his teammate to celebrate, now found himself inside the scuffle that ensued. But instead of pushing, he had his arms outstretched, blocking his teammates from joining the fray. He even pulled a player out of the heated exchange and got him safely back to the sideline. 

As the referees huddled together to sort out the penalties, Josh gathered the team in front of him and pleaded with them to stay calm. The Horizon players might get chippy, but they couldn’t retaliate. As soon as he finished his speech, Coach Pallanez tapped him on the shoulder. The referees had somehow, inexplicably, ejected Josh. 

That night, Josh was nearly in tears when he walked through the front door. He was hurt by the injustice of being wrongfully accused. He was also scared of what it could mean for his last year of high school football. Since Josh started playing football in seventh grade, Pecos High School has had four different head coaches. With each coaching change, Josh has had to prove that he could play despite having one arm all over again, restarting a process that normally takes years. Would this ejection wipe away all the trust he’d built?

“I’m really trying to do all the right things this year, Mom, and show them they’re not going to regret letting me play,” Josh said.

The next morning, when Pecos’s team gathered to watch the game film, Josh was terrified of what Coach Pallanez would say. From his first day on the job in February 2025, Coach Pallanez and his staff had held all the players to a higher standard than the previous coaches. They’d implemented the 212 mindset – a reference to water’s boiling point – demanding an extra degree of effort in the weight room, classroom, and football field, constantly reminding the kids they’d be out of the lineup faster than they got into it if they failed to live up to that standard. An ejection directly conflicted with these core values. 

Josh fully expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, all he got from Coach Pallanez was praise. 

“The referees made a mistake, but you can’t fix that mistake,” Pallanez said. “On film, it was clear he was not the one. That’s one of the memories I have of how he’s turned the corner. Because last year, he probably would’ve been the one in there trying to throw punches.”

The referees ejecting him was a mistake that could not be fixed, just as Josh turning the wrong direction in the womb and developing amniotic band syndrome was a mistake that could not be fixed. Life is full of these mistakes. Whether they happen at random or with a purpose, Josh does not know. But he does know that football has taught him how to respond to that adversity. He knows better than anyone that no one controls what happens to them, but they are rewarded for how they respond. 

And whether in a McDonald’s PlayPlace or on a football field, Josh’s responses continue to shock his mother in the best way. 

“I feel I wouldn’t have handled things in life as well as Josh has,” Teri said. “He amazes me. He can do everything.”