Scar Stories

Cool guys who live lives of action and adventure always have great stories about the scars they've gotten in their travels. And in an entirely unrelated incident, I've got a couple of scar stories, too. They're not all that exciting, but it was a choice between this or how much trouble we had finding a place to have lunch today because the MapQuest directions were all wonky.

I've got a small scar above my left eyebrow. You probably wouldn't notice it unless I pointed it out. In fact, you wouldn't notice it even then, unless I also shaved off the eyebrow and gave you a high-powered magnifying glass. And then I'd have to keep still while you scrutinized my face. Look, just take my word for it, or we'll never get out of here.

When I was much younger than I am now, like about a four-year-old, I was babysat by a family with a huge hill in their backyard. I should also add that this was in Michigan. In the winter. So it was big, snow-covered hill, ideal for sledding. That's all I'm trying to say.

So what did I and the child of the family do? Right: we sledded, on one of those old wooden sleds like you get in Citizen Kane. The "correct" thing to do was to lie on your belly on the sled and go swooshing down the hill, and once you reached the flat area, you eased into a nice smooth left turn. Except that the first time I tried it, the turning bit wasn't working. And there wasn't a brake. So, going about twenty mph, I went face-first into a chain-link fence.

And then it gets a little hazy, because I don't remember the next part particularly clearly. But apparently the fence acted like a big spring, bouncing me backwards at some speed while holding onto a piece of my face. After fifteen or twenty feet, I fell off the sled, bleeding into the snow. And then the babysitter, who happened to be a registered nurse, came down and stitched up my face.

That probably wasn't the big-action scar story you were hoping for. I feel bad about that, because some people's scar stories involve fighting sharks or something. Whereas my big-ticket scar story involves me and my inability to successfully operate a sled.

I've got another scar story. It's even from a fight I had in high school. My index finger got all messed up. The moral of the story is "don't punch someone in the mouth if it's going to turn out that they have big pointy braces, because it's going to rip up your hand and their cheek, and things aren't going to be pretty. And you'll feel pretty bad about it."