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SCAR TALK
Sun-Herald columnist Shelly Horton just dropped by to tell of her gripping encounter with Trinny and Susannah - and to compare our magnificent abdominal scars (Shelly had about three miles of organs removed when she was only eight; lucky to be alive, is Shelly).
Tell your own scar tales in comments. Carbon credits for the biggest scar with the least likely cause.
UPDATE. Scar-o-rama:
• “a small one on my chin, the result of falling face-first into an escalator.”
• “self-cauterization w/ a butane lighter.”
• “my career as a swimsuit model was over before it began.”
• “it sliced right across the kneecap down to the bone.”
• “Going through a barbed-wire gate on a motorbike.”
• “When I was 12 months old my mom rammed the family car into a bridge pylon and I did a Wile E. Coyote into the dashboard.”
• “An emu kicked a hole in the palm of my right hand.”
• “I’ve a perfectly circular scar on my right palm I received from a flaming shot of Sambuca.”
• “Almost lost the leg.”
UPDATE II. Remarkable and tragic events recalled by steveH: East L.A., an evening in late March of 1955 ...
I have one from where I broke my leg going down a set of spiral, marble stairs. The stupid things had no handrail, so I fell around six feet, stood up, dusted myself off and walked off.
I’d had a few drinks by then, and I felt fine and protested loudly that I “didn’t need to go to the hosthpital beeeeeeeecause noffing’s wrong wif me!”. Other people disagreed.
Well, see, I know I’m going to lose this one already. My college roommate had a colectomy. Now that was a scar. Someone else’ll have one of those, here too. And then I lose.
Me, I’ve got a good one on my middle finger where I learned 3 important life lessons.
1. beer-bottles & pool surfaces don’t go together.
2. self-cauterization w/ a butane lighter hurts—badly enough that you can remember the pain after being blackout drunk.
3. you do NOT want to spend the next six weeks being reintroduced to women you don’t recall meeting as “the bleeding guy”.Ever since then, it’s cans or plastic cups for me at pool parties.
She’s interviewed Tom Cruise 4 times. I’ve had the Jack 4 times. Yeah I’m bad.
Posted by dean martin on 2008 03 24 at 04:08 AM • permalinkI’ve got a 175mm scar on my upper left arm from hitting a concrete drain pipe when going backwards at about 30 knots (parachute accident), it resulted in a broken, rotated and displaced left humerus.
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2008 03 24 at 04:15 AM • permalinkFrom the second link the encounter looks like it was a bit of, er, fun?
As with Habib, my scars can’t be seen… except for the one on my foot when I jumped on a can out of Nanna’s garden, it was rusty. I had 5 stitches. I was only 4ish. I remember it, over 45 years later. They wrapped my foot in a nappy, and I had stitches without anaesthetic - I don’t remember the stitches. Dad had to sit on me, along with one of the nurses. Mum was in the doctor’s waiting room, inappropriately laughing.
#8
I bet that wasn’t funny.I have crohn’s disease and so have had to have two operations (‘90 and ‘07) to remove parts of my bowel (intestine), probably about 60cm or more in total, still got a bit left…
But with the two scars i have which are big and quite visible, I told me specialist recently that my career as a swimsuit model was over before it began… He said lucky there are plenty of other careers… :o)
Three scars on my left shoulder from a shoulder reconstruction about four years ago. Dislocated it playing rugby in a trial match for uni while trying to tackle one of my mates playing for the other team. Stupid idea; he (a winger) sidestepped me (a prop) easily, I stuck my arm out and pop went the shoulder.
Playing with a dud shoulder for the next year probably wasn’t the brightest either, not surprisingly resulting in several more dislocations. I finally got it fixed after it dislocated while I was lying in bed.
My best one is on the inside of my left thumb. I was pulling a cork from a wine bottle a few years ago and the thing wouldn’t budge. I had the corkscrew in my right hand and the neck of the bottle in my left and I was pulling up and pushing down hard when suddenly the glass let go somewhere on the neck of the bottle. My left hand slipped down and the glass sliced a gash around the inside half of my thumb. I’m left with a beautiful v-shaped scar (with suture scarring as an added bonus) and no feeling on one side of my left thumb.
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2008 03 24 at 04:41 AM • permalinkTwo on my left foot repairing dodgy joints, one caused by an argument between me and a particularly stubborn concrete pillar. One on the back of my left hand caused by an argument between me and the family’s genuinely insane kelpie-cross.
One nasty appendix scar caused by an alcoholic surgeon that was nasty to begin with (the surgeon AND the scar), then had to be opened up again a month later because of infection. It did get me out of 3 months of grade 5, so it wasn’t all bad.
There’s probably another in my groin from a heart catheterisation, but I wouldn’t know. No-one’s offering to look either.
All very minor thankfully.
#16
Once was the fashion even for non-Jewish men. I know myself.Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 03 24 at 04:55 AM • permalinkI’ve been hit in the face with a shovel, a truck, an airborne 20-gallon gasoline drum, and a paved road on Block Island. (Okay, the first two were toys, but I do have scars.)
Two years ago I leaned back in my chair to open a window. It was locked. I torn the biceps tendon out of my arm. The doc had to grab it, pull it through a hole drilled in my forearm, and staple it back in place.
When I was in second grade, the high school chemistry club (or whatever they were) were doing some sort of demonstration using chemicals in my class to do various things.
One of these things was to remove the shell of a hardboiled egg using watered down hydrochloric acid. Well at some point they wanted us to gather around the table that had all their stuff to show us something and as my tiny little 8 year old body tried to get a look, apparently at some point the container that contained the acid had tipped and spilled on my shirt and thusly my skin. So imagine if you will a bunch of high schoolers panicking over a crying second grader and such. First thing they do is pull the shirt off me over my head. Yes, a shirt that had HCL on it, over my head. Fortunately that didn’t do any further damage. So they brought me to old locker rooms and had me stand under a shower for a bit washing it off. Thank my luck that it was watered down or I probably would not be here today.
Anyways, I remember the initial burn took up a good portion of my stomach but now the scar only takes up a tiny portion of my stomach and looks a bit like New Jersey or Louisiana. It is hard to say exactly.
But what I regret most is losing that Bart Simpson shirt.
I’ve got several chicken pox scars, although they’re barely visible these days. There was no vaccination program in the small outback town that I grew up in. By the age of 10 I had contracted every single disease you find listed on the modern children’s immunisation program. Chicken pox was the only one that actually left scars. It was nasty, too. And in case you’re wondering, I’m pro-immunisation.
Posted by daddy dave on 2008 03 24 at 05:06 AM • permalinkIn the days when construction sites were kids recreational areas, I was passing the time wandering around on some planks on the second storey of a new school building with some neighbourhood kids. I would have been about 7 at the time.
One snatched my hat so I chased him around the planks to retrieve it. Rounding a corner, I tripped and went over the edge. On the way down I grabbed at a wooden cross beam. It had a protruding nail, which tore a gash in my hand. It was enough to break my fall and just left me a bit shaken.
My sister tied it up with her handkerchief. We never told our parents as those were the days when discipline was meted out for doing stupid things. The hand healed nicely but am left with my very own “stigmata” which regularly makes for a good “war” story from the dim dark past.
Bugger, all I have is a one inch scar over my left eyebrow from when I fell over as a toddler.
BUT!!!, I have broken my nose twice, broken my pelvis in two places, broken my tail bone twice, broken a couple of vertebrae, broken my left collarbone twice in one week, cracked my skull twice and cracked my ankles.
I know, I know. BUT, none of the above caused scars!!! So, unless I tell people what I’ve broken, I have nothing to show except X-rays. *sigh*
One small scar on the back of my right hand, gained during my days in the leatherworks. I brushed against a belt cutter at just the right angle and the blade cut me.
Four more, all in the, um, genital region.
Nothing to do with nails or windows.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 03 24 at 05:28 AM • permalinkI have a lovely scar across one kneecap from where it met the edge of a sheet of corrugated iron. We were roofing a house, and I had the job of pulling the sheets up the roof. I’d grab a sheet at the edge, duck walk backwards up the roof, pull the sheet towards me and repeat.
On one occasion, instead of the sheeting coming to me, I went to the sheet. Didn’t feel a thing, but it sliced right across the kneecap down to the bone.
About a minute later, one of my mates said, “Why are you wearing odd coloured socks today?”
I wasn’t. I was wearing two light green socks, but one leg was black with blood from the kneecap down. I had to walk down off the roof and down what passed for “scaffolding” - all three floors of it. Then lie in the back of the station wagon with an ice pack over it for the 15 minute trip to the nearest doctor with a needle and thread.
The worst part was getting the local - the she-devil of a doctor had to push the needle along the knee cap and squeeze in a bit of numb juice as she went. It was a case of “push-squeeze-OOOOOOWWWWW!” repeat, repeat, repeat.
The doc had her surgery in a demountable on a bush block. When we went in, there were about 10 patients waiting. After listening to my unearthly howling for 15 minutes, when I came out, the waiting list was down to zero. They had all decamped to the next doctor an hour away.
The best part was the tetanus shot. I refused to have one. The doc, who turned out to be a distant cousin (and a no-shit taking one at that) would have nothing of it. She walked across the room, filled a needle and told me I was getting a shot.
I told her I wasn’t.
She expertly threw the needle into my thigh from across the room, walked across and hit the plunger. That was the only bit of medical work that day I didn’t feel.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 03 24 at 05:30 AM • permalink3 inch diagonal scar on the tummy -
-Cause: Carelessness when ironing whilst stripped to the waist.
Four parallel furrows atop the scalp, (visible only if head is shaved)
Four matching spot scars accross the throat --Cause: Going through a barbed-wire gate on a motorbike.
Posted by Steve at the pub on 2008 03 24 at 05:37 AM • permalinkHmmm the choice from my collection are from two alcohol induced incidents - one when I decided to look into a cupboard next to the men’s toilet at a Sydney restaurant. The door was loose and I copped a beauty straight between the eyes leaving a lovely bleeding line. Then three years later after a night on the turps at Cobar I awoke for some reason and whacked my head on the window frame in my bedroom leaving another gash STRAIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES AGAIN! Two scars now - thank you guys and thank you Tooheys Old (not!).
So I was a kid of less than two years of age and inquisitive in the way that kids are. The family was living in Egypt at the time.
Up on the bench I hear a strange noise. What’s that? thinks I. Being a little tacker at the time, much smaller than the hulking beast that now bestrides the earth, I couldn’t see. Precocity runs in the family and I had it in spades so I worked out that if I moved a kitchen chair over to the bench then I’d be able to see what was making the noise.
I moved the chair and made like Sir Edmund Hillary, reaching the peak but without needing to resort to oxygen or summon my own Sherpa.
I saw what was making the funny, burbling, rhythmic harmony and reached out and…
...pulled a boiling jug of water down onto myself.
The water struck my chin and cascaded down my stomach. I fell to the floor screaming and passed out.
I was in a coma for a week and nearly passed on. Third degree burns adorn my chest, though time and stretching have reduced the visible impact, as did many years of my mother rubbing oil into my chest every night before I went to bed. That only stopped when I went to boarding school 10 years later. Luckily, I was still wearing nappies and so the crown jewels were thankfully saved, though the worst scar is not far away. A close run thing!
The moral of the story is - kids will always find a way to hurt themselves. Do your best to minimise the risk and leave the rest to providence.
It worked for me.
Posted by Jack Lacton on 2008 03 24 at 05:46 AM • permalinkDad was trying to fix a floor to ceiling double hung window in the house, it wouldn’t stay up. At one stage something happened, the glass smashed, it fell out and hit him on the forearm. Fortunately it was the bevelled edge of the glass.
At the glaziers (Dad was a chippie), the glazier asked “and how thick was the glass”, Dad hadn’t measured it. He held up his forearm and said “This thick”, there was a mark on his forearm where the glass had hit it.Hmmm, a few little scars from various incidents, one of which included me yowling a lot when, as a child, I cut my palm on a tiny milk bottle.
My favourite little scar comes from an occasion when I made soap at a friend’s place, causing her kitchen to require a HAZCHEM sign on the doorway. Her flatmate’s ire cause the more than interesting soap-making experiment to shut down permanently.
Happy days.
Posted by carpefraise on 2008 03 24 at 05:52 AM • permalinkThis all reminds me of a tale from a bloke at work.
In his younger, drunker days he was mucking about on a private property doing something undoubtedly illegal. The police show up and he bolts, diving through a barbed wire fence. Unfortunately for him he was only wearing footy shorts at the time and managed to tear his scrotum during the dive. After putting his testicle back into his bag he managed to evade capture.
I never asked to see his scar, although I’m certain he would have obliged.
#37 Anthony C,
your story reminds me of a couple of things that happened to my old man. When he was very young, his mum yelled out that there were lollies to be had. He grew up on a very derelict farm. anyway, he went flying up the paddock to beat his brothers and tried to jump the sagging barb wire fence. He too, had to have his bits and pieces stitched.A couple of years after we got together, he was almost vasectomised by a drill that kicked back and caught his stubbies and drilled right through to within a whisker of his vas as the doctor told us after he’d stitched him up. The scar he had in his groin was a beauty. It looked like he had a vagina. When the blokes at work asked him for a look, he showed them. They all said that it was great that now he wasn’t just a c***, he also had one!! heheheh.
After that last go at sterilising himself, I decided that I’d better have a child sooner, rather than later. I was pregnant six weeks later.
My first scar experience. When I was 5, I jumped onto the lid on top of a metal rubbish bin that my father had recently fixed the handle to. But being a good Irish father he nailed the handle from below the lid leaving a 3” nail protruding upwards that slipped easily into my small, unexpecting sack of tricks and fixed me with eyes agape to the lid.
They carried me into the hospital out patients on the lid where the doctors survived my howling and gently separated me from the nail.
Many years later I produced 4 children. None have rusty heads.
When I was four my brother and I were jumping on the bed. I fell off and landed on a metal (showing my age)toy cement truck. It stabbed me between the shoulder blades and when I reached behind my back to pull it out I pulled down. Openned myself up clear to the tail bone. Worst part was my relatives brought my brother presents because he had been traumatized. Don’t get me started on the leg I broke last June.
Pogria, it’s almost impossible to top your story at #38. Mine is rather mild in comparison.
As a small child I had my appendix taken out. As I grew so did the scar, to mythic proportions, to my mind. By the time I was sixteen I decided to give the two-piece swimming costume a try. For months I watched the beach-goers’ reaction and nobody blinked. All those people must have been very polite.
Apparently I had a very lucky childhood, no scars, no broken bones, and not for lack of trying.
I have only one scar, and that one ended happily with 8lb 6oz being extracted (eventually, after 14hrs in which he refused to come out, and 7 months of constant nausea… but I digress). It is about to be reopened in about 8 weeks (finally!). Will that count as one or two scars?Posted by Not My Problem on 2008 03 24 at 08:11 AM • permalinkNice vertical job on the abdomen, on the right side about two inches from the belly button, starting just above the pubic region heading north - about 14 inches or so. When I was about six, the kid next door thought it would be funny to toss a large rock into the cul-de-sac several of us were riding our bikes around. Timing being everything, I happened to hit it, and went down, on top of the bike’s high rise handle bars, which were then flat with the handles sticking up due to a failure of the goose neck assembly. Took the handle right in the gut. No immediate visible puncture, but a nice scramble job on my liver, small intestine, and a tear in the abdominal wall. The screaming kid routine running home and lack of blood masked what had happened for a couple of hours, at which point the diagnosis was initially appendicitis. The ‘exploratory appendectomy scar just sort of served as the starting point, I guess. After three trips to the OR over about as many weeks, and a couple of months out of school…good as nearly new.
Posted by Wind Rider on 2008 03 24 at 08:19 AM • permalinkAnd cossie is looking for a spare “r” too.
hmm scar war stories! love em!
Apart from minor cuts, the one I like to tell is Australia Day, circa 1975.
In the good old days, the little flag sticks had a spike / arrow head at the bottom, so they were easy to stick into the ground. God knows why you would want to do that.
Anyway, me and some friends were playing in our backyard, and I was carrying said flag, when I was knocked over by a bike riding maniac. Flag stick managed to jam itself into the ground, but spike facing up, where my mouth decided looked a good spot to land. Spike penetrated my upper jaw about 1 inch before I somehow swerved sideways.
Lots of blood later, my Dad rushes me to the hospital, and on the way, gets booked speeding! The cop sees me in the back with a towel more red than its original white, but still proceeds to lecture my dad about speeding!!
Anyway, I survived. In case you were still wondering.
ps my little girl lucy turns 1 year old this Thursday, and has a special day planned on Saturday. Will post up a pic in due course.
When I was 8, a couple of bones that aren’t supposed to be joined started growing together in my feet. The result was pain, pain, pain. Imagine an eight-year-old who doesn’t want to go to the amusement park because it hurts too much to walk around…
About a year later I had surgery to correct it. The scares are faint, now, but I had “racing stripes” down the outside of both feet for years.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2008 03 24 at 08:26 AM • permalink#50
I had “racing stripes” down the outside of both feet for years
Cool!
Posted by daddy dave on 2008 03 24 at 08:49 AM • permalink5” scar and dent on my right hairline and temple. When I was 12 months old my mom rammed the family car into a bridge pylon and I did a Wile E. Coyote into the dashboard. They tell me took 30 stitches to close it and that I almost died, but I don’t remember a thing.
The real tragedy: the car was a ‘57 Ford Fairlane ragtop with a 312 Y block and a Paxton. Completely totalled.
Lots of little ones, most old. An emu kicked a hole in the palm of my right hand while loading some onto a truck, looked down and it had thoughtfully stuffed it full of feathers as well.
I cut my right nipple tip off sliding down a sand dune where someone had broken a bottle. A dozen on my right ankle from a scungy dog.
Numerous on my head, most covered by hair.
A nearly completely faded patch on my back from my father and one of his “Phantom tricks”, which is now the code in our family for something which is a really stupid idea.
We had leased a trawler for the scallop season and my job was to spend a few weeks chipping rust and making it slightly seaworthy. I had a lot of trouble with a seized winch and was in a fairly pissed off mood when the old man dropped in to check on how the work was going. He said to me “Watch this, its an old phantom trick that should fix it”.
I sat on the engine box in just my shorts as he wrapped the outside of the casing in rag, doused it with metho and set it alight. It burnt for a little while then flickered out.
The old man then said “I don’t think that went for long enough” and went to pour some more on.
You can probably guess this wasn’t the best of ideas, as the unseen flame shot up into the bottle leaving him with a handful of flames.
He shouted “oh fuck” or words of that nature and started swinging the bottle around. The biggest of the flaming bits landed smack in the middle of my back and began to burn.
I took off over the side so fast the old man didn’t see me.
Some nasty burns but pretty well faded now.Also a scar on my right knee (a pattern seems to be emerging) where I had the bright idea of cutting some branches scraping on the roof with a butchers knife.
As for the circumcision scar, it was so bad I didn’t walk for nearly a year after it!Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 03 24 at 09:02 AM • permalinkI’ve got a tiny v-shaped scar on my right elbow where it fit perfectly into the blade-sharp edge of a broken ceramic toilet paper holder. I still recall the sucking sound made as I pulled it away.
Every now and then I’ll show folks my crapping scar. Hardest part was cleaning myself up with blood running down my arm, before heading off to the hospital to get sewed up.
#16
Catholics too.
It hurt so much I couldn’t speak for months.
Amongst those other little bumps and scrapes…
in grade eight a girl walked up to me and swish left me with a scar just to demonstrate to her friends just how sharp her nails were.
There is the modified finger print from clearing rocks out of a paddock.
The little triangle the slide from a Hi-Power removes from those who hold too high.
Oh and the work done by a plastic surgeon to repair the damage caused by sharpened tags worn in a rugby game.1 scar on my right forearm (very faint), and 3 on my right thigh, all running parallel, from a motorcycle accident when I was 13. I was a passenger on a motorcycle, with my older brother driving. We riding around a pasture, and when turned a corner, I got scared and grabbed his arm. Quite a stupid thing to do, as we went through a barbed wire fence, and gashed me up proper. The Bro, though, came through with but a single, minor cut.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 03 24 at 09:36 AM • permalinkLiteral rock in knee when I was 12 by the excellent idea (at the time to me) of wearing new shoes while riding my bike on a gravel patch.
Long abdominal scar from 8 pounds, 7 ounces of baby girl (now 29).
Lemon sized tumor (not cancer) scar.
Still have the one inside the right knee where my brother poked me with a stick. Got him back by hitting him with a frying pan.
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2008 03 24 at 09:45 AM • permalinkUp until I was forty I had little more than a couple of culinary related scars. Then I got a windfall: quintuple coronary bypass with long ugly scars, one each down my sternum, inner left forearm, and left leg, plus a couple of sets of scars just below my ribcage where they ran a couple of tubes to keep chest cavity from collapsing. (Never really understood that last one. What I do really understand was there wasn’t enough morphine in San Diego when they pulled those suckers out.) They’re real conversation pieces but also kinda a bummer because I’ve been weightlifting for the past couple of years, and although I’m proud of what I’ve achieved and like to show off at the beach, I still feel uncomfortable with that broad spongy line bisecting my chest.
Working in a very busy salad bar restaurant cutting rye bread with a serrated knife I whacked a sizable flap off my index finger. The blood spurted all over the bread board in front of a dozen mortified patrons. I picked up the board and carried the blood-spattered loaves back to the kitchen, pouring out about a half-pint on the carpet.
Then there’s The Ranch in Galena KS, where I got the door open just far enough for a fist to come flying out and open pretty much all of my eyebrow. ‘Twas mistaken identity, you see, and cold pitchers of 3.2 beer were applied courtesy of the chagrined identity mistaker.
Posted by spongeworthy on 2008 03 24 at 10:14 AM • permalinkexternal scars: many burn scars on my left hand while learning to iron, many burn scars on my right hand and wrist from being stupid while taking things out of the oven. one small scar above my right eye for slipping on ice and falling on a sharp rock, one small chicken pox scar on my forehead and one small scar on my chin for doing an unintentional somersault off my bicycle. one scar on my ankle when the stilleto heel punctured the skin while falling down a flight of stairs (sober. one scar for knee operation, one for the appendectomy and one for back surgery. oh and one for slicing my thumb while wallpapering. the largest (knee) is four and a half inches long. i think that is it. and i hope that will be it!
Scars not that bad, but pretty good stories. Right after basic training I went to a party a friend from college was having. Myself and a couple of friends were sitting in lawn chairs in the shallow end of the pool sharing d to toe, and a good deal of it too. The crowd of people parted like the Red Sea as I went to the bathroom to see what had happened. Only about 30 stiches around my eye and my eyebrow hides most of the scar. I forgot all about it by time we finished the Jack…...
BTW, I still had the ring and returned it to the lovely lady….unfortunately I looked like someone from night of the living dead with my head flayed open and blood everywhere. My reward was a “thank you, you better put some ice on that” (bitch didn’t even go get the ice for me!)
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 03 24 at 10:32 AM • permalinkScars not that bad, but pretty good stories. Right after basic training I went to a party a friend from college was having. Myself and a couple of friends were sitting in lawn chairs in the shallow end of the pool sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels. A very attractive young lady came by the pool claiming that she had lost an earring while swimming earlier and thought it might be in the pool. Being the gentleman that I am, I began swimming around the deep end looking for the earring, in the dark (it was well after midnight) Believe it or not, I found it!! As I came up from the deep, earring in hand to claim the reward I would surely receive, someone tossed an empty beer keg into the pool. Of course my face broke the fall so the keg wasn’t hurt at all. It nearly knocked me out but I was coherent enough to grab the keg to keep from drowning, it would have just ruined the party….. When I got out of the pool to check my injuries the water that was running off me made me look as though half of my head had been removed, I had blood from head to toe, and a good deal of it too. The crowd of people parted like the Red Sea as I went to the bathroom to see what had happened. Only about 30 stiches around my eye and my eyebrow hides most of the scar. I forgot all about it by time we finished the Jack…...
BTW, I still had the ring and returned it to the lovely lady….unfortunately I looked like someone from night of the living dead with my head flayed open and blood everywhere. My reward was a “thank you, you better put some ice on that” (bitch didn’t even go get the ice for me!)
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 03 24 at 10:32 AM • permalinkWhile running like the wind at recess on my first day at school, I slipped and skidded 15 meters on the side of my face.
The nurse bandaged me up like a mummy, and I walked home, where my dear mum recognized me only by my blood-soaked clothing.
She has never fully recovered, but it didn’t stunt my growth, so now the scars are up under the hairline. I don’t remember any pain, just a little chagrin.
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2008 03 24 at 11:25 AM • permalink#26, Pogria, I’d Divorce that bloke if I were you…
I’ve a perfectly circular scar on my right palm I received from a flaming shot of Sambuca. The problem arose due to the length of the argument I had while it was burning. There was about half the shot left by the time I gave in. But I drank it and burned my lips too…
3 inch scar on the back of my arm from a window that just needed breaking (whiskey this time). I was wearing steel capped boots. 9 stitches.
One eyebrow is split nearly in two with a scar, the explanation of which still depends on whose drunken recollections you prefer 9 years later. (Beer, Whiskey and some other stuff.)
Worst of all I got myself a nice little Hitler mustache scar (not to mention a good portion of the right side of my face) when the front wheel of my bike parted company with the rest of it while I was mounting a kerb. It ended up jammed in the gears while I face planted into the concrete footpath. I had a 4 inch long crack in my helmet (they do save lives). Also nearly broke my collar bone, 7 stitches.
Many other burn and road rash scars, but none worth mentioning here.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2008 03 24 at 12:04 PM • permalinkBTW, this is easily the funniest comment thread I can remember reading anywhere. Keep up the excellent work Tim.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2008 03 24 at 12:11 PM • permalink#1. Circumcision
#2. Conked on head by baseball bat. I was pissed.
#3. Smallpox scars. From the live vaccine. People tell me I’m lucky I didn’t get a full strength case.
#4. Flipped over handlebars and landed on the side of my head. Doctor picked gravel out of the dura mater before sewing my scalp back up. Saw no need to send me to the hospital.
#5 - Whatever. Cat scratches and bites. Cats do play rough.
Internal scars? Lost a few brain cells to a transient minor ischemic event (minor stroke to you uninitiated), fortunately it was only a clot. Then there was the tonsillectomy. Took the adenoids too. But they grew back.
Then there’s the scar than came as the result of an injury that almost killed me. You see, Mom used iodine, Mom was a registered nurse. Mom was bound and determined to any germ that dared land on one of her kids’ wounds was going to die a gruesome death. Accompanied by the screeching of her patient.
So I didn’t tell her about this tiny little cut in the pit of my left knee. Almost lost the leg. I did die, but it wasn’t permanent. Mom was not about to let any one die permanently on her watch. As she told me on any number of occasions, I was going to live even if it killed me.
Psychic scars? Those are not for a forum such as this, or for the purpose of entertainment. You wish to read about the results of gaining those scars, you’ll have to visit my blog.
Posted by mythusmage on 2008 03 24 at 12:22 PM • permalinkOne on my hand from a run in with a particularly large and angry rooster.
The one on my chin was an attempt be “cool” in front of the boys’ lacrosse team at high school. I thought I’d impress them by vaulting a fence on my way to track practice on the same field. Except my feet got stuck atop the fence and I landed on my face. Mortified, I quickly got up and coolly strolled over to my team, not understanding why the guys were looking at me in horror rather than laughing their asses off. I caught on once my teammates pointed out that my chin was bleeding profusely and my shirt looked like I’d just murdered someone. The doctor who stitched me up was cute, though. Not interested in a complete spaz of a high school girl, of course.
Posted by Polish Frizzle on 2008 03 24 at 02:18 PM • permalinkI have a small (1/4”) round scar on my right leg about 6” above the knee, where I snagged a barb on a barbed wire fence. It’s memorable because of the way it happened. I was visiting relatives in Cuba in the days before Castro, and we were at a farm in the country. My cousin offered to let me ride her horse. Bad move. That was more horse than I could handle, and it ran away with me. The next minute was like a real-life wake-up-screaming nightmare. We were going like hell down a straight dirt road with a steep downward slope on the left, a cane field on the right, and a barbed wire fence about a hundred yards in front. When the horse got to the fence, he stopped, and I went flying. I remember lying on my back looking up at the horse, and he was looking down at me. The reins were still in my hand, and they passed between two strands of the fence. That horse had thrown me through a barbed wire fence and all I got was the wind knocked out of me, and that little nick. Oh, and I tore my pants on the fence.
East L.A., an evening in late March of 1955.
I was (barely) 5 at the time, walking back from the local grocery with my Mom and two (both younger) sisters, crossing the street.
A hit-and-run drunk driver blew through the red light. I can still remember seeing him coming through the intersection, and the white-red-green knitted gloves I’d gotten the previous Christmas as I held up my right hand toward the car, signaling it to stop. It didn’t.
Sisters were OK, Mom was killed, I woke up in the hospital a few days later (embarrassed; a nurse was putting my jammies on. I had no idea where I was and why my head was bandaged like a Hindu turban).
I’d gotten a massive depressed skull fracture (who cares about the broken clavicle?), and surgery repairing the damage left me with a semicircular scar running above my right ear from just above the corner of my right eye back to a bit behind the ear. Which scar was clearly visible if my hair was cut short (still would be, except now it’s white, instead of black).
Which meant that at summer camp, I was referred to as “the kid with a horseshoe on his head”. And I’ve still got a dent above my right ear.
Years later, I was working at a college airport, and met a doctor who’d flown in to visit his daughter, who was attending the school.
He noticed my name, and asked if I was related to BillH, who happened to be my dad. They had been classmates in medical school, until Dad decided that he’d make a rotten physician, and left for other pursuits.
Turned out that the doctor was the attending anesthesiologist at my surgery, and remembered it clearly after nearly 20 years. Said I was in very bad condition when I was brought in, and they didn’t expect that I was going to make it.
There are a couple of other minor scars here and there, but except for splitting my scalp once on a rafter (also hidden by hair) they’re pretty minor. Bled like a stuck pig, though.
C-section for emergency delivery of my daughter right at 7 months gestational age. Reason: the placenta had abrupted. Doctor discovered upon opening me up that not only had the placenta abrupted, there had been placenta accretia - thats when the placenta grows INTO the wall of the uterus. It was as if a tree had been pulled out by its roots, the doctor said.
I also have recieved a recent scar for a really stupid reason too - we’ve somehow managed to keep ourselves in a manual can opener state in my house hold, and I was opening a can of tomato sauce. The manual can opener opened all of the lid but for two spots, directly across from each other. Stupid me went ahead and started pushing with my left hand to push one side of the lid down, my fingers slipped and the ragged edge opened up a huge gash on the meaty portion of the lower section of my left index finger.
I hate seeing my own blood….all that good tomato sauce down the tubes…
Posted by Sharon_Ferguson on 2008 03 24 at 03:29 PM • permalinkI’ve got a lovely crescent-shaped scar (Peace Be Upon It) on my right hand, the result of attempting to extract a guitar amp from behind a wire-mesh screen in the bay of a tour bus.
Ah. Those days.
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2008 03 24 at 04:54 PM • permalinkAs a young I fractured my lower vertebra and tore my left leg off when my horse and I collided with a Road Grader. Actually pulled the leg bone out of its socket and tore my new 501’s through the crutch from outer seam to outer seam. Recovered from that with 180 stitches and a couple of months in rehab.
Later I smashed my left elbow on some rocks during contact drills in the Army and need 38 stitches. Then while I was on restricted duties, one of the big Q Store shed doors cracked me over the head requiring 28 stitches.
Posted by deadparrot on 2008 03 24 at 05:33 PM • permalinkOh, Tim, you should know better than to ask old people about their scars.
Childhood scars:
On my left knee from a fall off a bicycle, and just below the instep of my left foot from stepping on a piece of glass on a beach. Leftism didn’t work out for me fairly early.Adult scars:
An 8-inch scar across the right side of my abdomen from having my gall bladder and appendix removed in 1969 (nothing wrong with the appendix, but in those days, it was medical practice to take the appendix whenever abdominal surgery was performed). Nowadays they can take the gall bladder out laporoscopically, which reduces the scar. Maybe dreamed of by surgeons in 1969, but not doable then. I was 22 at the time, and disinclined to wear two-piece swimsuits from then on. I laud the advances in medical science, even when they don’t benefit me.A 2 1/2-inch scar slightly below that, with an accompanying array of smaller scars (less than an inch) from lapband surgery (a laporoscopic procedure).
A 9-inch scar below my navel, just above the mons venus, for removal of all the potentially diseased female organs (an emergency procedure in my 50s, which I don’t regret at all—- well, except for the emergency part).
A somewhat largish scar (can’t get there to measure it) under my left arm for the installation of a shunt, and another on my abdomen below the navel (you guessed it, left again) for a heart catheritization. Fearing chest to navel scarring should I live long enough to need a heart transplant, I am for gene therapy advances instead.
And last, but probably the most entertaining, a lovely inch-long scar on my left hand between the index finger and thumb, from working on a wood carving while simultaneously watching a how-to video. It’s the only one immediately visible, and when people ask, I tell them I got it in a knife fight, and I lost.
I have 2 on my forehead, one from my last drunken crash, one from my sister taking offense at being called for dinner when she was 4 & I was 12. She threw a very large rock at me! One on my abdomen from an ectopic pregnancy - 8"long, 1 1/2” wide - I hear they do that with much less scarring these days. No swimsuit modeling for me, either. And a blue tattoo on my right knee—embedded Levi’s threads—which is another reminder every day that alcohol is bad for me.
My (suspected) first sex reassignment surgery left a scar from crotch to sternum. They took out my gallbladder and some “anomalous tissue”. Anomalous for a guy, anyway. As in most such cases, the records are lost.
And few guys get their gallbladders removed at age 20, for that matter, that should have been a dead giveaway.
The second sex reassignment surgery left no apparent scars. It’s nice to look normal at last.
My second scar experience. Motor bikes were a boy ego thing in my final year at high school. I didn’t have one. But before one ‘little lunch’ break around 10am on March 6 1972 one of the boys with a bike suggested I come with him to find out where another boy with a bike was. As he hadn’t come to school that day. So we mounted his 750cc Honda 4 and boot scooted across town to find our friend had just left for school.
Wanting to catch up with him the rider fairly flew down a side street with me on the back in the light rain, and didn’t see the 1966 VC Valiant coming from the right and we collided. The front of the VCV hitting the right side of the bike square on.
After some flying we landed, skidded and stopped. One wore shorts and long socks to school in those days in tropical environs. My initial dazed thoughts were I’m OK. A Vietnam vet with some medic experience arrived and asked me if I was alright and I said I thought I felt a throb in my right leg. He pulled my sock down and lying a bit floppy in the sock was the bottom part of my right leg partially severed half way between the knee and the ankle. The cut was so quick that no blood appeared. Holding the leg together somewhat was the skin and some meat on the inside of the leg and my fractured tibia and fibula. Four tendons were sliced through as if by a knife.
Local rural Queensland medicine learnt a bit from my experience. First gangrene and then they took the first lot of stitches out too soon and the scar just pulled open. With the nurse saying ‘I told you Dr Torrisi’
Anyway the resulting scar goes from the shin bone around the right of the leg and under the calf muscle some 3”. As if a garter has burnt its way through a sock.
As recently as last week I had some US winemakers convinced it was the result of a shark attack on the Barrier Reef. So I continue to get some mileage out of it.
The world’s lowest scar-to-destruction ratio?
In 1990 I, young idiot that I was, drove my SAAB 900 EMS around a bend in the coal terminal district of Newcastle, at a speed at which momentum trumped adhesion. After jumping the median strip and slamming into the opposite curb, the car rolled three times and flipped at least once on its ‘pitch’ axis. A lesser vehicle would have vaporised. All I have to show for this ballet of destruction is a quarter inch keloid scar on the inside of my right wrist. It often catches my eye when I grip a steering wheel, reminding me not to be an irresponsible twat.
#78 - Sharon, did you hear that voice telling you that something bad would happen? I hear it when I do something like that “I told you it was sharp”, and it’s my mother.
ROFL!!!! Yes!! Just as I was sticking my fingers into the opened slot…she had perfect timing!!
Posted by Sharon_Ferguson on 2008 03 24 at 09:57 PM • permalink“Almost lost the leg”
Tim, you really do need to include the information that it was not the injury itself that nearly led to the loss, but the massive infection that followed as a result. Relying on the good sense of a seven year old is the surest way to lose the kid.
Posted by mythusmage on 2008 03 24 at 10:04 PM • permalinkMy two most prominent scars are the result of the wonderful New South Wales state education system.
The first one was in 1974 in primary school at Orange. The school had a brand new wing of classrooms, a new library and administration block, with the old classrooms recently demolished. With a refreshing disregard for OH&S, the playground had been partly ripped up and there was loose asphalt everywhere. I was playing tag with some classmates and slipped on a piece of the loose asphalt and sliced the side of my right knee open. To add insult to injury, my mate ran up, whacked me and ran off yelling “Tag, you’re ‘it’”. I hobbled through the new buildings, leaving a trail of blood in my wake and horrifying the librarian, who was first aid officer. I had three stitches in my knee and still have a bare patch on my otherwise hairy leg.
The second one was at high school in Queanbeyan in 1978. Plus ca change, the school was recently named in the Sunday Telegraph as the roughest in NSW. After a ‘disagreement’ with a classmate and push came to shove, he jumped off a retaining wall and shoved me backwards. I put my left arm out as I fell, straight through a window and took a 10cm x 2cm slice out of my forearm. He tried to tell the deputy principal that I went to punch him but he ducked and I put my arm through the window. His story fell apart when the deputy found out I was right handed. The scar is near my watchband but has faded and shrunken to around 5cm x 1cm.
In 1990 I, young idiot that I was, drove my SAAB 900 EMS around a bend in the coal terminal district of Newcastle, at a speed at which momentum trumped adhesion.
fidens, was that at Kooragang Island on the bends on the Newcastle side of Stockton Bridge? I was at Willytown in 1990 and remember that many a car came to grief on those bends.
I was doing hot knives as a teenager by myself, and passed out, and there is still a faint X on my throat from where I landed on the knives.
Posted by Mambo Bananapatch on 2008 03 25 at 01:47 AM • permalinkThe scene: Montréal, 1975, between Crescent and Mountain Streets (Rue Crescent et Rue de la Montagne nowadays, of course). Two very classy streets for the café/bistro/bar crowd—that turn into two very dangerous streets on the other side of the tracks (literally), nearing the St. Lawrence River.
Three utterly swacked Anglos, doing what addle-pated Anglos in Montréal do—i.e., walk downhill (of course), miss the entrance to Le Mètro (completely), stop to “laugh at the ground” (periodically), find themselves at the river (inevitably), on the cleverly named “Rue Dock” (naturally), in the middle of a gang war (what else?).
Your writer was stung by a bee, or so it seemed, as all three idiots stumbled around uttering such witty remarks and cleverly formed phrases as “Whaaaa?”, “Wazzat?”, “C’mon M’thhfuggz..”, “Hey, man…”, and so on.
It was only much later, amidst a coruscating effulgence of red and blue lights and the dopplering wail of sirens, that your deponent awoke to the tender ministrations of “un médecin d’ambulance” who politely remarked: “C’est seulement une petite blessure de chair, Monsieur” as he drew taut the last of the binding and deftly snipped, split and knotted the bitter ends.
I carry the “petite blessure” in the form of a 4cm scar on my right side between the 8th and 9th “false ribs”.
My body carries many scars—with as many stories both bizarre and mundane recounting their provenance. To paraphrase the recently departed Martin Wald: “There are many scar stories on my naked body—this has been one of them.”
Posted by MentalFloss on 2008 03 25 at 01:53 AM • permalinkI don’t have any interesting scar stories, but like #90, have injuries from the school playground: when I was about six years old, I was playing “tag” in the playground, and ran into a tetherball pole. The next thing I remember, I was in the hospital getting X-rays.
I can see how my nose isn’t straight, but fortunately, it’s not that bad; most people are surprised when I tell them about my broken nose.
Posted by Ted Schuerzinger on 2008 03 25 at 08:23 AM • permalinkSmall scar across the tip of my nose from getting blown up by a practice grenade at Benning.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 03 25 at 11:20 PM • permalink
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All my scars are inside.