My cat scratch on the left side of my face, the raised red line stretching from my temple to my cheekbone, is my favourite thing about my face now, the one under my lower lip nobody ever sees, and the ones on my left cheek from where the dog ripped up my face when I was nine are only visible in just the right light, at just the right angle. What's your best scar?

-- Kymm (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), June 26, 2000

Answers

Nothing tickly impressive - the secret scar on my chin which I received when I tried to pick up a rugby ball just as someone else tried to kick it.

-- Pale Blue (paleblue@darkblue.2ndmail.com), June 26, 2000.

I'd really like a cool scar. Alas, I have only a) a white spot under one of my eyes, where an enormous chicken pox fortunately faded, and b) the traces of stitches on my ankle, where I had blood taken when I was six months old and had spinal meningitis. Along with the usual acne, of course (which seems to be getting worse as I get older).

-- Dorothy Rothschild (dorothyr@spies.com), June 26, 2000.

I have a scar on my right pinky. I got it while trying to juggle a kitchen chair with my feet (I must have seen some circus performer on TV or something). I dropped the chair, and the metal foot (missing its rubber protector) sliced open my pinky. I had four stitches.

I also have a tiny scar on my right cheek, just under my eye, from a mishap with my brother and the edge of a windowsill. It is not noticeable, though, unless you're looking for it in bright florescent light.

-- Laura (lbhelfrich@yahoo.com), June 26, 2000.

I've got one about 3" long on the front of my left shoulder, right where the seam is on a t-shirt, from a tenodesis I had done in high school. Nobody's asked me where I got it; I plan to tell whoever asks that I cut myself shaving.

Speaking of shaving, I have a scar about 1" long on my chin, very faint, actually just a shallow groove, like somebody dragged the tip of a dull pencil across wet clay. Apparently I was bitten by a dog when I was a toddler. I never noticed it until I begain shaving.

There's probably a scar from a hernia operation down there, but it's buried under hair...

-- Colin (ethilrist@prodigy.net), June 26, 2000.

My best scar is on my ring finger (left hand second finger in) which is a straight white shiny scar with a small dash across it. I got it, and the matching right hand hip just under the bikini line scar when I had a bone transplant from said hip to said finger.

The doctor in my local town did an x-ray of the finger, and showed that it had a hole in the top joint, hole as in all that was making there still be a top joint was a thin shell of bone slightly thicker than your average smarties/m&M shell. The specialist took great glee in telling me that had I applied the smallest amount of pressure in the wrong way, my upper joint would have snapped like a twig. Somewhere, in an Australian Medical Association journal, there is an article on my finger, as the Specialist was rather keen to write up my oddity.

The finger itself is now shaped like one of those dog bone shaped bikkies, and isn't quite as strong as the rest of my fingers. It's the only one that doesn't crack when I flex it, like the rest of my double-jointed fingers do.

-- Amanda Page (amanda@amandasprecipice.com), June 26, 2000.

My favorite is the one no one can see 'cause it's on the back of my head under a lot of hair. When I was three or four I was swinging upside down on a swing at a neighbor's house. I'm told I fell and gashed open my head. I don't remember how many stitches I had; indeed, the last thing I remember is running home and finding my mother in the kitchen. After that, nothing.

/Robert

-- Robert (rbdimmick@earthlink.net), June 26, 2000.

I have two scars from surgeries when I was a kid. One looks like a second bellybutton, a little lower and slightly off-center. The other is a little below that and looks like a big smile.

I used to pull my dress up to show people my scars, but I stopped doing that when I got hair "down there". My doctor told me that I would never wear a bikini when I grew up, but I do. I don't care if people think I have two bellybuttons.

In fact, I used to freak out my stepchildren by telling them I was an alien, and showing them my second bellybutton to prove it.

-- Catherine (catcoicrit@earthlink.net), June 26, 2000.

Sixteen inches, armpit to armpit. Open heart sugery, bilateral incision. It's lovely.

I have been asked, though, if it was from some sort of breast implant surgery gone awry.

-- Sara Astruc (saraastruc@aol.com), June 26, 2000.

I wouldn't touch this topic with a twenty foot pole! LOL!

-- David (jdavid@dave-world.net), June 26, 2000.

I have a small one right between my breasts. Very few people have thus ever seen it.

A highschool boyfriend got a little crazy one night.

-- Jackie (jackie@jackie.nu), June 26, 2000.

Chuck E. Cheese hates me.

Or more accurately, Showbiz Pizza Place hates me (cause that's what it was called back then).
When I was about 7, I was at the neighbor's b'day party there, and as I was going towards that area where they have hundreds of plastic balls you can wallow in, some other kid bumped into me, knocked me over and rammed my forehead into the stairs going up into the pit.
I ended up with a scar in my right eyebrow which is not too bad now, but then I was the envy of all the other kids at school.

-- Liz (Lizstricklen@yahoo.com), June 26, 2000.

Two nice gashes on both sides of my left foot from surgery on it. My *favorite* scar though is the tiny little one on my thumb from cutting an apple. I played with it so much that it just never went away and I always dig at it.

-- Stef (stef@stef.net), June 26, 2000.

Mostly I don't scar, which is fortunate. I have a chickenpox scar just at the exact centre of the top of my cleavage, perfectly round and white. I'm rather fond of that one.

The other major scar in my possession is a big squiggly gravel tattoo on my right knee, from the Great Bike Wreck at age eight or so. I wouldn't let my mother clean out the depths of it (it went to the bone) and got a nasty infection. I remember my mother bathing it in herbal infusions and trying subtly to get the gravel out at the same time.

-- Katharine (radix@ican.net), June 27, 2000.

I have two fairly impressive ones, from back surgery when I was fifteen (I had a hunchback). The larger one is relatively harder to see, because it runs right along the middle of my spine, so it's tougher to spot. It runs from the base of my neck to the top of my sacrum. The other one is from where they harvested the bone graft they used, along my right hip, about 6" or so, I guess. I keep toying with the idea of a zipper pull tattooed on the end of the one down the spine....but I'm chicken.

-- Jessica (jesst@brown.edu), June 27, 2000.

I have tons and tons of scars - from an operation on my knee and hips when I was 14, to remove a noncancerous tumor, my c-section scar, a scar near that one where I had endometriosis removed - but my favorite scar is the one on my right foot, which covers my middle three toes and then goes up my foot for about two inches. It happened one morning three years ago when my then-boyfriend spilled boiling oil on my foot (it was an accident - or so he says!)(he was making gravy).

I was laid up in bed for two weeks and couldn't walk normally for about a month after it happened. The whole time it hurt, though, I kept saying to myself "Someday it won't hurt, and I'll be grateful for that." Every now and then I catch sight of the scar and think "It doesn't hurt, and thank god I made it through that..."

-- Robyn (robyn@hiwaay.net), June 27, 2000.

I have a three inch long, three quarter inch wide curved scar on the outside of my right thigh from being stabbed with a broken beer bottle. I was funny cause it did not appear to cut my jeans or my long underwear. (it was winter)I did not realise I had been cut but I did some serious mischeif to the guy who did it anyway. Walked about three miles home and was getting undressed when my mother came in to give me some amout of grief for being out so late. She stopped in the middle of good string of bad words to ask where I got the red long johns from. She also noticed how pale I was, peeled off the long johns to reveal a gash that was so deep and opened up it looked like a big red set of cartoon lips. Fourteen stitches to close and a noticable scar for the rest of my life.

I also have on each shoulder a series of 26 small (the size of the head of a stickpin) scars from Native religious cerimonies over a few years.

-- Daniel (truth60@yahoo.com), June 27, 2000.

It's not actually a scar, but I've got a dent in my left thigh from being hideously drunk in a pub when I was 20, missing the last step on a stairway, and thwacking the side of the bannister. I had a big black bruise for about six weeks afterwards, and bear the memory still, every time I run my hand down the side of my leg.

Which admittedly isn't often.

-- Jackie (jackiec@diaryland.com), June 28, 2000.

Yeah, right, Jackie. (Kidding.)

I have a tiny giraffe-shaped scar over my right pinkie's lower knuckle. When I was about twelve, I was washing dishes and was stupid enough to stick my entire hand in a highball glass. It broke and I had to have surgery and stitches. It was pretty neat.

I also have a tiny scar on my right forearm from where my little brother stabbed me with a pop bottle opener when he was about three. He still says, 'Remember that time I stabbed you?' Yes, yes I do.

-- Jackie Danicki (nein@freeuk.com), June 28, 2000.

"I have a chickenpox scar just at the exact centre of the top of my cleavage, perfectly round and white. I'm rather fond of that one."

I have a scar exactly like that. It's slightly raised, round, white.

I hae a myriad of scars. I was the incredibly clutzy.

My favorites. The top of my left hand has a round scar from an IV needle when I was an infant. Top of my right hand, a curved scar from reaching into the oven and hitting the element.

Inner right ar has a U shaped scar from hitting the edge of a cast iron skillet right after I had pulled it out of the oven.

-- Suzy (suzy@cyberbabies.com), June 28, 2000.

Great scar stories. None of my scars are very obvious and none of the stories behind them particularly dramatic...

I have a smal, slightly raised scar above my left breast about even with my shoulder. I was twirling on a swing set and caught the skin in the chain.

A round, raised scar on my right hand below my index finger. I was running in the house and ran into my mother's cigarette. She felt so badly, she let me go to the horse races that night with a family friend.

A nasty patch on the side of my left knee from the first time I shaved my legs. Lots of blood and a hunk of skin on the razor.

My c-section scar from the births of my twins. And all the stretch marks. Far and away, my favorites and I wouldn't trade them for anything!

-- Katie (ella@webtv.net), June 29, 2000.

I have a scar about 4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide that runs from one side of my pelvis to the other through which my beautiful, amazing son Logan entered the world via C-Section. Before his birth I had the most beautiful "stomach" area - really I did, models would have traded with me - and I would not have that back for anything in the world. My scar reminds me every day of Logan's entry into this world and what a miracle really is.

-- Michelle Matzeder/Wilde/Bruner (new-jerusalem@worldnet.att.net), July 01, 2000.

Lots of scars! Let's see... my left thumb is very slightly misshapen at the tip, and the nerves are a little weird in there, from a very bad accident involving an exacto knife, while working at the Stratford Festival. Got Worker's Comp for that one.

Lots of scars in my inny bellybutton from two laproscopies...

Several almost-healed ones on my fingertips from my days as a cook (they used to call me The Bandaid Chef, for awhile there)...

A fairly dramatic one extending from my right eyebrow to the temple, courtesy of a malicious partygoer during my first week at University (shoulda pressed charges; didn't though...)

A few shiny indents on my shins, dating back to my childhood allergies to mosquito bites, plus an unfortunate lack of discipline in the leaving-those-scabs-alone-for-chrissake department.

There's more, but that's all I care to bore you with right now.

-- Cameron (cameron@cimtegration.com), July 04, 2000.

It's not my scar- it's my fiance's... Four years ago he was riding his motorcycle, when a dump truck ran a stop sign and hit him. There have been lots of surgeries and complications... he's finally walking without his cane - and has a scar that goes from the top of his knee down to his ankle. He forms keloids too ... so it is VERY big and red & purple and gross!!! Plus, there are scars all around it from where the pins used to stick out. He will have an eternal reminder of how lucky he is to be alive though!

-- Melissa (RngrChic@aol.com), June 21, 2001.

I have a long scar from a knofe fight that goes from the solar plexus to right below my um, "thingy". I also have a large z-shaped scar that is on my lower back from a procedure called, aptly enough a z- plasti

-- Ray Watkins (rayadj67@hotmail.com), January 16, 2002.

I have a lot of scars on my arms and on my knees from being such a tomboy when I was young, but my one on my right knee about 7 inches long from a knee operation I am sort of fond of. My faverite one that I would not trade for anything come from an accident I had on a motorcycle when I was almost 16. I had abdominal injuies and and an emergency expolitory laparotomy at that time, that was later recut twice for adhesions. It is 13 inches long one half inch wide very irregular and purple and has so many suture marks I lost count. It runs from slightly under my breast bone around my belly button to 1 inch over my pubic bone! My doctor told me I had such a nice flat hard abdomen that he heated to deface it and that I would never wear a bikini again. I did and still do wear bikinis, he did tell me later that I wear the scar very well and he thought it very sexy. Today at 29 I wear the very smallest bikinis I can buy, smaller than I ever would have thought of wearing before I had the knarly scar. When I was in school, I charged the boys to show it to them, and I charged them more if they wanted to see it below my hair. I am very proud of it, I guess I have a scar fetish. Today it still gets bright red an glistens in the sun. Men like it so much they always ask me at the beach if they can touch it. I still let them do it, most of them reach inside my bottom and feel it in my hair. I have a boy friend 7 years my younger and he gets very jealous when I go to the beach.

-- Michelle Johnston (mysterywomen102@hotmail.com), February 01, 2004.