THE BORN LESAR

Scar-wise, I figure I'm just about average

I have an owie.

Really, it hurts real bad, and it's right there on the inside of my middle finger on my right hand, so every time I open a door or pick something up, I bump it and cry for my mommy. But she doesn't come anymore. Hasn't since I was 45. What's up with that, anyway?

I'm afraid my owie is going to leave a scar on my finger, unless I have plastic surgery soon. It's probably not worth it, though, unless I still decide to get into the hand modeling business, but that ship probably sailed when I singed all the hair off my knuckles in that little mishap with the Sparklers and the plastic gas can. Note: Never use a Sparkler as a flashlight to see if you have any gas left for the weed-whacker. Really. I mean it. It's a super dumb thing to do.

I was looking at my owie last night, and thinking about what kind of scar it will leave (no, I don't always use my time wisely). That got me to scanning the other parts of my fingers and hands to check out old scars, which are sort of like a personal medical history record preserved in collagen. As scars go, I probably don't have an impressive collection, but enough, I'm hoping, so a loved one can identify my body in case I'm ever decapitated in a remote control model helicopter accident. Hey, you have your irrational fears, I have mine.

Perhaps my most profound scar is on my right wrist, and it represents the how-stupid-can-aperson- be period of my life, roughly between the ages of 18 and 23. That scar was born on a spring night in 1984, I think, when, while dancing to the Van Halen tune 'Jump,' I did just as the lyrics suggested and stuck my wrist squarely in the path of a violently spinning metal ceiling fan blade. Yup. True story. Sliced it wide open. Took a ride to the hospital emergency room, where the attending doctor wanted to nominate me for the 'How Best Can a Person Waste The Time of a Medical Professional Who Could Be Helping Someone Who Really Needs It' award. I declined. I'm sorta modest that way.

Anyway, the resulting scar is an inch-and-a-half long, with little spikes from the stitches. Pretty gruesome, really, like that gash on Frankenstein's forehead. It's the best scar I have, although it's pretty lame compared to somebody who's got like a 35-inch S-shaped cut mark on their back from falling into an industrial brush shredder. Yeah, some guys have all the luck.

I have a few scars on my belly from surgeries over the years. The most noticeable one is on my lower right tummy, where a skilled doctor sliced his way in to remove my appendix. The scar might not be that prominent, except that I developed an infection after the initial procedure, and had to have the incision sliced open a second time. That scar is now a pretty nasty-looking old wound, made even worse by the middle-aged pudge swelling up around it every time I go on a pudding binge. Like last night. Full disclosure.

There are three other scars on my abdomen, small ones, from when my gall bladder swelled up like a water balloon and a surgeon performed a laparoscopic procedure to take it out. One of those marks is on the top side of my belly button (otherwise known as my lint ball collection point), the other is lower to the left, and the third one I can't even find anymore. That's the good thing about scars that you get where thick fur grows. It's like when a plane crashes in the jungle and at first there's a big ol' slice in the landscape, until the trees grow back. Yeah, sure, the scar is there somewhere, but you can't see it, so it's no use trying to get any sympathy from strangers. They always want proof.

I have proof, on the inside of my right ankle, that one summer day in about 1974, while riding my blue Rupp mini-bike at the intersection of Blue Jay Road and Spur Avenue southwest of Willard (and you say I never give you details anymore), my cousin, riding a Purple Yamaha 100, cut in front of me, with his tail light hooking my throttle cable, pulling me to the gravel and dragging me for enough distance to cover half my arms in a swell case of country road rash. Somehow, my ankle was wedged between the sharp edge of my rear tire fender and the wheel, which carved out a crescent-shaped hunk of flesh just below the ankle bone. Mysteriously, the wound never bled so much as a drop, but took a long time to form a light layer of transparent skin that remains intact today. You can see it when I wear sandals, or low-cut socks. Although I doubt you care.

My left knee carries a mostly-faded reminder of why chain saw manufacturers recommend that you not cut materials other than wood with them. That was a close call, the wicked, whirling chain nipping through my pants leg and skimming my kneecap, not all that far from executing an unplanned amputation. At least that scar came from a work-related accident, unlike the one on my right pinky finger that I got at a graduation party in 2004 when I tried to smash an empty beer can on my buddy's head and it slipped and the jagged aluminum sliced the finger open like a boiled carrot. We fixed that one up on the spot with SuperGlue, but it still left a nice three-quarter inch reminder of how stupid people can hurt themselves. All of my other lifetime physical scars are garden variety, various nicks and scrapes on knuckles, elbows, fingertips, shins and forearms. I probably have a couple hiding on my scalp somewhere (a second-grader whipping a rock across the playground that thunked me on the noggin comes to mind), and I'm sure there are others that have healed fully over time and no longer remind me of my clumsiness, lack of skill with power tools, poor decision-making, plain bad luck, and as we've fully established by the wrist example, simple slow-wittedness.

I would guess that I'm a pretty average guy, scar-wise, and I intend to keep it that way by steering clear of bullets, knives, saw blades, broken glass, animals with teeth, paper (got a cut right now on my right thumb, matter of fact), lawnmower blades, corkscrews and violently spinning metal ceiling fan blades (oh, you just had to go there, didn't you?).

Of course, we've just been talking about physical scars, and haven't even made mention of the emotional wounds that never heal with time. Oh, if I only had the space. And if you only cared.