We caught them in jars, yes. Jars with lids with holes punched in them. Jars with a paper towel stretched across and held in place by a rubber band. Why? Because we could. Because someone showed us how. I was an adult before someone told me that a firefly (or lightning bug) wouldn’t leave my finger if I kept walking; I test that theory sometimes, but I don’t capture them in jars anymore. That didn’t turn out so well. I dropped the Mason jar and a shard bounced up from the pavement, cutting a neat little crescent in my — let me check — right leg. That was my first trip to the emergency room at St. Agnes, although I needed nothing more than a so-called butterfly bandage.
I once thought I might write a short story in which a woman reviewed her history via her scars. Then I read an Erica Jong novel, in which she detailed the same idea, and decided to abandon it. But do you have a scar? Do you have a story? Not to brag, but — I have quite a few. Right calf, left knee, right eyebrow, right arm, back of right hand and the little curlicue above my lip. Oh, and the awesome pile of scar tissue beneath the second toe on my right foot. I’m not sure which scar tells the best story. Probably the toe.
Back in olden days (1940s/50s) toy typewriters looked like this one — http://www.goantiques.com/search/images.jsp?id=879842
.. all metal construction with a dial that you turned. My bright and shiny red Junior Dial was a gift on my fifth birthday. A few months after, my brother Mikey ran it over with his trike. He fell off, was angry with me, and threw it… at me. Seems that part of metal had bent from the bike mishap into a knife-like edge, and I’ve a two inch jaggedy (never was stitched) scar on my right elbow as a result. Mikey’s been long forgiven by me, but he never did quite outgrow that temper of his.
On that same arm, on the the inner side, there are two big tooth mark scars from our mixed-breed pooch Brownie, who, now that I think back, looked very much like a wolf. My Dad and Gram were such soft-touches and would take in any stray cat or dog that showed up on our doorstep. It was a virtual menagerie! At one point we shared our house with eleven cats and seven dogs of various sizes and temperaments. Turns out that Brownie was, as they say, not good with small children … and he had to go off with animal control after this this incident … and this was after the one with my baby sister’s face.
I consider myself very fortunate to have never broken any bones (I was masterful tree-climber in those days).. oh, and that I’m not a werewolf. Though when the moon is full…
Japanese beetles! That’s what those icky bugs were! Anyone else?
Sounds like we’d ALL be better off without our families.
Ewww. Whatever you do, DO NOT be tempted to put up one of those Japanese beetle ‘catcher’ hanging bags in your yard or garden. What happens is that the critters are attracted from MILES around to _only_ your place. You end up with this writhing, undulating, yes, moving thing full of beetle bodies hanging in your tree. It is really disgusting. You can benefit from my experience since I had to learn that lesson the ‘hard way’. Brrrrr..
My best scar is in the palm of my right hand, delivered there courtesy of my big brother, who was “babysitting” me at the time. Funny, all of my siblings have scars from those times. Hedgehog is right. I’ve got a faint scar on my upper left arm courtesy of Rusty the horse, who decided to walk me into a tree. Most of the other scars are surgical and not as much fun to talk about.
Gotta share a tee shirt I saw last summer…”Scars are tattoos with better stories”. Too true.
Japanese beetle traps are the worst and the smell from it when full is gaggingly powerful. Every year, they come to eat my beautiful rose bushes.
The week before I started first grade, my family was over at my aunt and uncle’s new house. My dad, my aunt and I were in the back garden, which must have been long neglected because it was really overgrown. While my aunt and I stood at the fence talking to her new neighbor, Daddy was nearby, cutting the lawn with a power mower… without a bag to catch the grass.
And then, in the blink of an eye, the mower picked up a spike that was laying on the ground, shot it through the blades, from whence it bounced off my aunt’s fingers, and propelled itself into my leg. Apparently, I then went into full end-of-days demonic mode, an early candidate for Linda Blair’s role in The Exorcist.
The result – a three inch scar on my right thigh, as well as my mother’s sighing declaration that I would never be Miss America with a scar like that so visible (we’ll leave the shrinks to piece out the scar that comment left on my psyche). My scar is *so* a part of me though, so familiar – I look at it sometimes and try to remember that some right thighs are smooth, that everyone isn’t scarred in the same way I am, and in the end, it really doesn’t matter: it’s me.
Oh pooh, I see your scars and raise you.
Ok, we never had fireflies; we had infestations of some bug on one of the trees and my sister and the one of the girls next door picked off all the bugs. Eeeeeeuuuuuuu. Buggggs.
The scar at the base of my right thumb where I jabbed the knife while peeling birch bark? Thumb numb for years; summer camp porbably shoulda sent me to the hospital for stitches but nah. Er you know that whole “don’t bring the knife TOWARD you” thing? Don’t.
Lots of ER visits but the vast majority involved spraining. I’ve sprained seven ankles. Yes, seven.
And I admit the other scars are all surgical, so not nearly adventurous enough. The big fracture – the right kneecap – no scar, no sign of it. But my back IS impressive in that weird sort of “hey, they’ve had their FUN with you, haven’t they?” way.
Andi
I’ve got a scar on my left knee that I got from a fall at my aunts house when I was five. I had to be taken to the hospital for stiches. Its actually the reason I’m now so freaked by needles and stuff like that. It was a very busy night and they didn’t let the novacaine work properly before stiching me up. My mother, a nurse, started yelling at them. Ever since I’ve been petrified of needles, incisions, etc. Apparently I wasn’t before that.
I’ve also got a big scar on my left elbow from a fall I took skating about fifteen years ago. I was living in Maryland at the time. Managed to drive myself home (with a standard transmission) but couldn’t tie my sneakers. Knocked on my apartment door and asked my roommate to take me to the hospital, but first to tie my shoes. After failed physical therapy I had to have surgery. Turned out I has shattered the head of my radiius bone. Ended up with a four inch scar. Its healed pretty well, and is just out of sight for me so it doesn’t freak me too much.
When I was a kid, I went everywhere barefoot. To this day I disdain shoes and wear them as little as possible. In retrospect, however, it probably would have been a good time to wear them when I was using the electric trimmer to clip our hedge.
I remember I was standing on my tiptoes and reaching as high as I could because the hedge was so tall and I didn’t want to drag the ladder out from the garage. I stepped on something sharp which made me jerk which allowed the middle two fingers of my left hand to come into contact with blade.
They weren’t removed, thank God, but they were mangled down to the bone. I went to the back door with my bloody hand cradled in front of me and told my sister, “Go get Mom!”
“You’re not the boss of me!”
“Go get Mom!” I showed her my hand for emphasis. I was probably in shock by then
She ran off and returned a moment later saying, “Mom says stay off the carpet.”
Fingers numb for six years but no blood on the carpet.
So, what’s the toe story?
The idea of spraining seven ankles conjures up an interesting image….
I’m reminded of an old Peanuts cartoon. Charlie Brown asks Snoopy how his ski trip went. Snoopy says, “Great. I only broke four legs.” Charlie Brown looks startled, and Snoopy adds, “Fortunately, they were all on other people.”
I have a little scar in the middle of my forehead, courtesy of a fall I took onto a sharp rock in Yellowstone Park when I was six. My big brother and I had been wrestling on the rocks, and though my accident wasn’t really his fault, I tormented him with guilt about it for years.
Then, when I was about fourteen, he said something at the dinner table that annoyed me, and I threw my fork at him. It bounced off his nose, but he barely flinched. Instead, he pointed at me, his expression one of complete triumph. “At last,” he said, “we’re even.”
This is one scarred group.
In a good way.
Fenwick Island, Delaware, 1986. Second day of vacation. I’m in the surf with my sister when I feel something on the bottom of my foot. It’s not a sharp or stinging sensation, more of a bump and a tug. “I think I stepped on something,” I call to my sister. I get out to see if I’ve scraped my foot.
My second toe is — really, get out here if you’re squeamish — almost severed.
My sister, IIRC, goes back to our parents’ house, which is on the other side of the Coastal Highway, to summon them. Luckily, there’s an emergency room nurse on a nearby towel. She wraps my foot with a towel. (Funny aside: It’s a T-shirt from Goucher College, then all-female, where my father was teaching a journalism course. The shirt has a legend: “Better Dead than Coed.” Later, my father will present the blood-spattered shirt to the school’s president.)
My parents arrive and I hop to the roadside, where the car is waiting. We go to the emergency clinic down in Ocean City, where a young doctor pokes my toe and says: “Yuck.” And then: “You’re going to need more attention than we can give you here.” Just terrific bedside manner.
My father, who’s a bit of a doctor groupie, is calling his club back in Baltimore, the Hamilton Street Club. (Really, we’re not the sort of a family where people belong to clubs, but, well, my dad belonged to a club.) He asks if there’s a doctor dining there that day. My father is ready to have me Med-Evaced to Johns Hopkins if that’s what it takes. But he’s told there’s a guy in nearby Salisbury, Dr. Thom, a plastic surgeon.
We drive 40 minutes to Salisbury. There’s one patient ahead of me, but he’s having trouble with is paperwork, so I get to go first. (He’s having trouble with his paperwork because — no lie — his thumb is in a metal canister from a bit of freelance home repair.) Dr. Thom examines my dangling toe and says I’m lucky: While the cut is very, very deep, the toe is still intact. He pats it back into place, then wraps about 7,000 feet of gauze around it. The big risk with such a cut, explains Dr. Thom, is infection from bacteria in ocean water, so one wants to avoid stitches if possible. He gives me a prescription for antibiotics and crutches and sends me on my way.
Cost of visit: $15. My father can’t get over it. “Fifteen dollars!” he keeps saying. “And he had current magazines in the waiting room.”
Back in San Antonio, it cost me more to have the gauze removed.
The toe still cramps oddly every now and then, usually in yoga class. Odder still, the corresponding toe sometimes has sympathy cramps.
Cool toe story. Thanks.
Liquid vitamin E has been recommended. We’ll see if it works. And to be honest, I don’t remember the actual fall, but the next thing I knew, I was on the ground and everything hurt. I was just glad I didn’t break anything.
My editor, a lovely person, sent me a copy of Otto Penzler’s anthology, “Murder by the Racquet.”
I have old scars, but I also have burgeoning scars created just this Memorial Day weekend when I took a header on the tennis court. I don’t really play tennis. I took lessons last summer and decided to try again this year. My husband and I were knocking the ball around. He hit it and I thought I could reach it. Next thing I knew, I fell on my face, totalling my glasses (which left me a lovely little scar close enough to my eye to make me take pause) and creating massive “burn” wounds on my shoulder and both knees that my neighbor doctor said will probably scar now that the scabs have fallen off. Something to look forward to.
Karen,
Don’t under-estimate the powers of Neosporin. Meanwhile, sounds like a terrifying few minutes — before and after the fall. My sympathies.
My scars are boring! I did manage to inflict a lasting one on someone, though. My uncle is nine years older than me. When I was about two years old my mom was giving me a bath at my grandparents house. He came in the bathroom and scared me with a big plastic alligator. Before my mom could stop me, I jumped out of the tub at him and bit him on the chest. Thirty years later, he still has the scar and the story gets told at family reunions.
I seem to have lost my favorite scar, which was a “chain-ring tattoo” on my right leg. After I got my clipless bike pedals, I did a 50-mile bike ride for MS research, and I had to get out on Long Island early in the morning. The Forest Hills train station has stairs, but it also has a wheelchair ramp that goes back and forth in switchbacks, with metal railings, from the street to the platform.
So naturally, I had to ride up it. At one of the switchbacks, I kind of stalled out and started falling over, and then I couldn’t remember how to detach from the pedals, because the new Eggbeaters require a little angle of the foot and it hadn’t become muscle memory yet. So in this narrow space between several metal railings, I fell over. Banged up my side, which wasn’t so bad, tore my finger, and the greased chain-ring dug into my leg pretty good. Just as a train went by.
I was kind of proud of the tattoo. How often do you get a medal for machismo and slapstick all at the same time?
This conversation is beginning to remind me of that classic one between Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss on the boat in JAWS….
“Mary Ellen Moffat. She broke my heart.”
One on my forehead is from the fifth grade. Vincent Martinet, a bit of a bully, tripped me while playing touch football and I landed facedown on the blacktop (I love that word). I arose, a little dizzy, and everyone screamed because I had blood running down my face. I ran to the school nurse who asked what had happened.
“Vincent tripped me.”
“He WHAT.”
I hadn’t stopped to think that the school nurse was Vincent’s mom. My mother had to come over from a substitute teaching gig because Mrs. Martinet was freaking out and unable to decide whether to call a paramedic or just stick a bit of gauze on it and send me back to class. Then off to a doctor who just taped it up, but the other kids was impressed by the size of the Band-Aid covering my forehead the next day. It’s just a jagged white line now, but it is right at the point of my widow’s peak, so it’s a good indicator of hair loss (none to speak of).
I do have some small marks on my forearms from falling into a rosebush when about four years old. Mrs. Dunham, at whose house it happened, put Bactine on all the little cuts and it stung. We didn’t have any Bactine in our house, so it made a big impression. Mrs. Dunham commited suicide the next year, but her husband and young son (maybe seven at the time) didn’t move. We used to tease and dare each other to go into the bathroom where her ghost haunted the bathtub where she shot herself. I don’t know how that kid could stand to take a bath, but he was a sweet guy and probably turned out just fine.
Most of the rest of my scars are surgical and in weird or unspeakable places, except for one big one on the side of my neck, from an abscess (another word I love, if only for its quirky spelling).
Hmmm – forehead from running into a wall at age 4; under my chin from trying to climb over the front seat of the car and landing on the metal strip (this was a long time ago!) running along the top of the seat; next to the right eye from a car accident; left forefinger from trying to poke a hole in a leather strap with a sharp knife; inside of left thigh from a sharp wire on my bike — my tattoos have much better stories