Tredante Bias pounds out a beat on the snare drum that hangs from his shoulder. Flanked by good friends Quenton Woods and Ty Sims, a smile escapes his lips as the three do a show-style number that has become a trademark of the Central Medical Magnet High School Marching Band.

"I do everything they do," said Bias, a sophomore at Central.

"Yeah, we keep him out of trouble," said longtime friend Todrrick Poullard. "I taught him everything he knows."
The students had just left a practice where they prepared for Christmas performances and spring competitions. As Bias had pounded out his part in the song "This Christmas," the hall came alive with the sounds of the season and the spirit of the band members.

Bias is at home here in the band hall, dancing, laughing and smiling - a teen among other teens.

But unlike most 15-year-old students, Bias does not have two complete arms, both stopping before the elbow, or a right leg, which stops above the knee. A prosthetic helps him walk.

But what some might see as a disability, Bias sees as a catalyst for creativity.

"Don't let nobody tell you that you can't do anything," is the mantra he has lived by and the words his family instilled in him when he was growing up.

"So they just encouraged me to keep going," he said. "I can do anything that other kids can do as long as I put my mind to it. That's what they always told me."

And that is exactly what he has done, ever since he was a baby, said his mother, Regina Williams.

When Bias was born, Williams said doctors tried to offer explanations for why he was born without all his limbs. But in her opinion, they didn't really know.

"When he was born, it took me a while to see him, but my family took to him right away," said Williams, 31, who works as a custodian. "I think it was just I had to deal with it."

Tredante, though, didn't seem to need full arms and legs to thrive. Even as a child, he went about life independently, said Williams. He used a fork between his toes to eat. He threw off the prosthetic arms that Shorkey Center therapists tried to put on him.

"I didn't like that," he said.

He eventually adjusted to the prosthetic leg, but never the arms, he said. Today he eats by positioning the spoon or fork between his head and shoulder, his mom said.

The drums took a little more ingenuity. The dream of playing took root when he was young. Bias' older brother, Jacobie Bias, 21, played the drums for his grandmother's gospel group and Tredante wanted to play as well. At the time, though, he couldn't figure out a way. But then came middle school and a new friend with ample creativity.

At Austin Middle School, Poullard had a few ideas for securing the drumsticks to Bias' arms.

"At first we used the bandanas, but you know, they kept messing up," said Poullard, 16, now a sophomore at Central. "So I had some wristbands on one day and I was like, 'Let's try this.' He put them on and he started playing and we just started playing the next day, started teaching him everything he needed to know."

To this day, Poullard will place two sets of wristbands on Bias' upper arm. He slides the drumsticks in between Bias' arm and the wristband. After Bias shakes his arms a few times to make sure the sticks are stable, he's ready to go.

Central band director Carl Collins said he was a bit skeptical when Bias first approached him in 2007 about joining the group. Collins wondered how Bias would play and there was also the issue of marching. With a prosthetic leg, that could prove difficult.

"But then I thought about it," Collins said. "I thought about how I feel when somebody limits you or says this or that."

So Collins told him to report to practice and Bias held his own.

Now, he participates as a full band member just like everyone else, taking the same tests, enduring the same long practices in the sun and listening to the same correction from Collins. That's the way he likes it.

These days, as he beats away at the snare drum in front of him, he makes plans. Bias wants to attend college and eventually become a lawyer. Prairie View A&M University is his top choice at the moment, he said.

In the meantime, he said he will continue to have fun, "just doing what I love with my friends and marching."