Find some long forgotten old scar on your body and tell a funny or interesting story about how you got it? Or tell a boring story, but make up stuff, so we'll stay interested.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Answers

Being as it's the 4th of July in the States, if you happen to have a funny story about blowing your hand off with fireworks, why that's quite appropriate.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

I have one scar. It's a small one on my right hand pinky.

When I was little, I was (oh, how shall I put this?) restless. I couldn't sit still for very long without having to do something else. For entertainment, I used to balance chairs on my feet. (Practice for my future circus career.) I was balancing an old kitchen chair on my feet. It had metal legs, with those plastic plug things at the bottom. I dropped the chair, and the one leg without the plastic protection thingy sliced open my pinky.

The trip upstairs to tell Mom was not a pleasant one, I must say. 'Cause it was stupid.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

I have a number of scars, most of them with normal stories ... I split my thigh open on the sharp edge of a bleacher when I was eight, I got bitten by a German shepherd (dog, not an actual German shepherd) on my upper right arm when I was 10, and I got the back of my hand stabbed with a broken aluminum tent pole and a shard of glass in unrelated incidents.

But I also have a scar on my left forearm, about three inches long, running from my wrist back toward my elbow, that I have no idea about. I don't remember any injuries there, but it's been there as long as I can remember.



-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

No interesting scars here. No broken bones, no dog bites, no operations. Almost every irregularity on my skin can be traced to having chickenpox at 13, and there's not much more to say about that. I used to have an indentation on my forehead that looked like a sabre scar but was actually the result of a collision with a giant can of Hi-C: at seven I tripped carrying a bag of heavy groceries and hit my head on the edge of the can. It's mostly been sanded away by exfoliants over the last fifteen years; I hadn't noticed it in a couple of decades until you asked the question.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

No joke, I have a scar on my right wrist that is the result of a monkey bite.

I was in sixth grade and visiting relatives in Clear Lake, Texas (coincidentally, the town where the child-drowning mom lives, although I do not believe monkeys played a role in that tragedy). A neighbor had a spider monkey who had never bitten anyone. I guess I was the first.

A few months later, it got out of the house and was hit by a truck and killed. The Karmic Boomerang works on monkeys, too...

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

I have four scars, I wrote about them back in January.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

I have a 3-inch long burn scar on my inner forearm from wrapping it around a popcorn popper when I was seven or eight. I'm only sort of dumb--I was trying to move my litle brother away from it, and burned myself instead.

There's one above my eye and one underneath my chin, both results of running too fast and being clumsy and landing on sharp-edged furniture. I got a Strawberry Shortcake doll for being so good about the stitches for the first one.

The most spectacular of my scars is a round one on my cheek, which is pretty much invisible now, that I got when I went face-down into the road, after having been hit by a three-wheeler. A three-wheeler, y'all. Manned by another six-year old. He rode home, leaving me in the middle of the road, and informed his mother that I was dead. Nice. I also had a broken nose, two black eyes, and two fat lips.

Also, hi. This is my first post. I just couldn't resist the scar stories!

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

I am a mass of scars, but I am not in the mood to describe what a completely inept and uncoordinated grown-up I've turned out to be. I shall instead describe what an inept and uncoordinated child I was: When I was six my mom's boyfriend Al decided to give me riding lessons. Peanut was a small, pretty horse. Peanut wanted carrots and sugar cubes. Peanut wanted to go back to the stables and enjoy his dinner this one time. So he took off back home. Unfortunately, I was sitting on Peanut and had not mastered how to stop a horse that disagrees with you. People were running behind us, Peanut got scared of the people and broke into a gallop. Very exciting! I remember very clearly seeing that we were approaching Mulberry Lane (a busy street) and then I was looking up into a paramedic's face. Looked over, and there was the ambulance parked by the field that I was laying in, WAY past Mulberry Lane. I had been dragged, people! My thumb was broken (as it had been the part of my body tangled in the reins, hence the dragging) and I've got these itty-bitty scars on it to prove it. Plus, it doesn't bend right. Bad horsey.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Anna Beth: I hope you sued. People who let youngsters drive motorized vehicles on the road really tick me off.

I have a scar on my hand from when I was riding my bike down the road and I slammed into a mailbox. Bad mailbox.

-- Anonymous, July 04, 2001

Bad, Dave Van. Do not blame the horsey, and you know it.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

MichaelH's description of his scars made me smile with recognition. I have similar-type "normal" scars from semi-serious accidents. The biggest scar on my body, however, from a scrape I got climbing through a basement window during spring cleaning. It healed in a week, but the scar is still there fifteen years later.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I have a scar on my ring finger. A scar from trying to pick up the pieces of a broken relationship. A scar encircling the base of the finger, reminding me daily of the perilous journey I took down the road of holy macaroni. Just kiddin'! Ha! I do have a scra on my ring finger but I think it was from opening a can of cat food. During my military daze, I dated a girl with an almost imperceptible three inch scar down her face - she'd been mauled by a pitbull when she was a tyke. She had beautuiful hair and was some kind of regional scholarship pageant beauty queen - all about looks that girl - tell me she didn't have issues.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I have a scar on my ring finger from an art project in fifth grade. We were using tools to carve patterns in linoleum? or some substance with a cork-like interior (why? to ink them and make etchings? I know not). I'm not surprised I cut myself: since the scar is on my right hand I must have been holding the cutting tool (I remember a half- circle blade less than the diameter of a pencil eraser) in my left hand, which is not the dominant one. I was always trying to shift my handedness, but apparently I wasn't having a Clever Day if I was shifting while using a sharp instrument.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Oh, goody. Scars. I have a number of scars from skinned knees, bicycle crashes, chicken pox, and what-have-you. I've got one on the knuckle of my left middle finger from lifting a stack of windowpanes to get something out from under them. I've got one on the palm side of my other middle finger, from when my brother convinced me it'd be fun to throw beer bottles we had found and break them in a parking lot. I picked one that was pre-broken. Not fascinating scars.

I do, however, have a mystery scar. It's on the inside of my left ankle, and it's about the size of a half-dollar. It's a mystery. I came home one night when I was about 17, felt sort of an itchiness in my ankle adn thought maybe my shoe was rubbing it wrong, so I took off my shoe and sock. And there was a hole there. A HOLE in my ANKLE. A dermal ulcer, which was, at that time, maybe two inches in diameter. It was big. Long story short, and leaving out some of the gross parts, they never did figure out what it was. Doctor wasn't able to cut through the (I'm sorry, all of you. I'm disgusting.) scablike covering to fully investigate. Had to use this crazy acidy dermasomething stuff (which is what we had used on my brother's bed sores, horrifically) to dissolve it. Anyway, eventually it healed, and it's just a funny-looking pink patch on my ankle these days. Everyone's best guess: spider bite of some kind. Mysterious.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

My right hand has other scars as well--on either side of the base of my thumb, where I had a pin drilled through the bone, and a few scattered ones from when my own dog bit me in an agony of fear and pain when she was trapped.

Of all my many scars, the only one I'm ashamed of is the one I gave myself deliberately. I was wrestling with someone in that way you do with someone you feel a great deal of sexual tension about because it's physical contact but *clearly* not sexual so it must be okay and what could anyone have a problem with this about? The strap of my watch cut into my left wrist. Even before we started sleeping together, I had peeled off the scab a couple of times, wanting it to scar, as a memento. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

You've got to be the grossest girl -- ever.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I feel soooo much better about that "couldn't cut through it" thing now. Thank you, Lisa. Oh. And, um, Ew.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Glad to be grossest and to have rated an um, ew from guppy. No, really, I appreciate the chance to tell that story. I have wanted to in my own journal, but the man in question reads it so....But anyway that's a weight off my chest.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

When I was in the fourth grade....ages ago....my brother and i got to stay home for a snow day. Well, we thought we would be clever and make snowballs to put in the freezer to save for the summer so we could pelt the neighbor kids! My brother handed me some snow, I packed it into a ball, turned around and ran to the freezer. *wham* i hit my eyebrow on the edge of the microwave. i was laughing so hard, but when i looked at my brother, he was crying. (he was five years younger than myself) I put my hand on my head and saw that it was covered with blood. Well, this whole time, my parents were outside trying to dig the cars out of the snow....i needed stitches, but we couldn't get to a hospital...so it's a beauty of a scar. I think my mom was struggling with anger at my stupidity and worry that I was hurt!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I have various scars from cat-fights with my little sis, but the most interesting scar was obtained at the same time I broke my arm. I had just turned 9 and we were preparing to leave on a family vacay to Pennsylvania the next day. Mom had sent the previously mentioned sister and I to put some of our toys and such into the van seeing as how we were spending a week camping and might want some entertainment. Here is a dangerous combination for you: Add two little girls, a newly paved road(on an almost completely vertical hill, nonetheless), a red radio-flyer wagon, and a hundred year old oak tree. My little sister and a were playing a rather interesting game, we called it daredevil. It is the same game that resulted in her broken arm 4 years earlier. In this particular version of the game, we tried to see how close we could get to the edge of the hill without going over. I lost. The wagon went careening down the hill (read: small mountain) and into a hundred year old oak tree. I went *splat* against the tree and bounced off it at a high speed into the pavement. This resulted in a broken arm and some large gravel being imbedded into my knee. I know am the proud possesor of a polka-dot knee, that consists of several medium sized rock shaped scars. Sound like lots of fun, don't ya think?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Scars? (Cory, yer makin' me nervous these days).

A inch long one on the knee- my sister thought it would be funny to stick her foot in front of the wheels on my skateboard. While I was moving. Split wide open to the very white tendon underneath. Wench. Should have beat her up for that. Except she was 7. Oh, that's right, I beat her up anyway. Nevermind. (Don't feel sorry for her. Between the ages of 7 and 10 her biggest joy in life was pulling the pillow out from under my head while I was watching TV on the hardwood floor of the living room. Bounce. I'm sure I'd see some scars if I shaved my head.).

Fairly lie-worthy scar on my knuckle. Looks just like I hit someone and split my knuckle open. Unfortunately, it was a huge box that came down the conveyor belt (I was loading trucks) hit me. Slammed my hand against the side of the truck. Someone got a package covered in a good pint of O+ the next day. After the gushing stopped, my supervisor told me to get back to work. I told him to fuck off and walked on out. Never did get the t-shirt they owed me. (Didja know that the workers in the area that loses the fewest packages get t- shirts?)

Finally (are you really still reading?), I had the misfortune of meeting a group of fairly unfriendly kids with rocks in their hands (I'll leave out the part explaining why they had rocks in their hands. Suffice to say I sorta deserved this.). One of those rocks found its way to my front teeth. Through my upper lip. Know why lips are reddish? No, not because of MAC cosmetics. It's cause there's a big 'ol blood vein running through each lip. Wow that thing carries a lot of blood. Know what else it carries? Anesthsia. At least, when it's injected properly.

Say, perhaps, no one at the hospital you ended up at spoke your language. And assume (just as a theoretical exercise, of course) that these people aren't really revered for their warm human touch. Nor are they known for their ability to notice that end of the anesthetic needle ended up in the vein that was sliced neatly in two, and the patient ended up swallowing all of the novocaine as it poured out of the open end of the vein and into his mouth.

But they *are* a strong people. So strong that it only took three nurses and another doctor to hold down the 12 year old kid while they sewed his lip back together with no anesthesia.

Not that that would leave a scar or anything.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

This isn't old, but it is a scar.

Last year as I was performing a choreographed fight in the Medieval Faire I work. In the middle of the fight I slice my own finger open with my own sword, cause I'm an idiot. I don't notice it until the end of the fight when I'm dragged off the field. "Man, that fight sucked. I could have done so much better. Hey, my finger hurts."

While fighting I flung the blood around on myself and came off the field looking like I'd been in a real fight. Interestingly enough, my fight partner didn't have a drop of blood on herself.

The previous year my acting troupe was performing at a different faire. Two of my friends were performing their fight. Allan had changed parts of his costume and hadn't rehearsed in his changed costume. His dagger got caught in his billowing shirt and sliced into Jon's thumb. Jon tries to continue, but he's losing blood. After the fight was over, we find out that Jon's thumb had bee cut on the knuckle down through the tendons.

Jon was just recently able to bend his thumb completely.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

Mandy, you use sharp blades in your fights?

I was in a theater company for a couple years that was founded by a fightmaster (I think that was his title), so all of the stuff we did was heavily physical. We mostly worked with epee (sp) and "daggers" that were short epees (rather than the knifey-kind), plus quarterstaff and a lot of punching/kincking/flipping stuff. I took a lot of hits, especially when I was learning, but the blades were not sharp so at worst it left a welt.

The worst accident I can remember was one year during the climax of the show, a woman got the tip of the dagger right below her eye. She had to be taken to the hospital. It turned out she was ok, just had a big black eye, but to everyone there it looked like he stabbed her in the eyeball.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001