Scahhhhhhhd foh life!

This week for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, I decided to choose this prompt:

3.) Tell us about that scar.
(inspired by Katie from Rooftop Harmonies)

I was thinking about this very topic recently… I do have quite a few small scars… most from cooking or kitchen-related incidents. I have never had surgery, but most of my scars do have a pretty interesting story behind them. I shall detail the major ones for you now.

We will start with one of the first scars I ever got, aside from all the times I skinned my knees falling as a kid, and of course, the chicken pox scars. (Luckily my grade school existence was not so unbearable that I had to resort to cutting. Gah.) On the side of my left hand, right where my thumb meets my wrist, I have a one-inch long scar. It’s jagged, but I think it’s really the coolest of all my scars. By now, the color has lightened and it has blended in with my normal skin tone. I was about eleven years old… around the time I was still wearing pigtails, not quite as straight as they should have been. My Mom used to take me to Disney World every year in October. It was an annual thing. She worked for an airline and so we flew for free, but we never went during school vacation because the flights were all overbooked. This one time, we happened to have gone with a couple of her friends and their children, so we stayed at a timeshare. I remember being in front of the condo and was jumping rope one afternoon in the sun. I, not always the most graceful person, somehow stepped on the rope or got myself caught on it, and wound up falling to the ground, the side of my hand skidding against the concrete. There are a couple of other smaller scars on the top of my hand from this incident, but they are barely visible. I’m sure this scar would not have been nearly as bad if I hadn’t picked at the scab, but really… what kid can resist a scab? Pff.

Another of my scars from when I was a youngster comes courtesy of my Junior High years when I thought it would be cool to show off my Grandmother’s sewing machine. Now… this was not your ordinary countertop model… no no… this thing was ensconced in what was basically a large mahogany desk/cabinet housing. The top of the desk measured about 2′ x 3′, and the sewing machine collapsed into the desk so it would be a flat surface. You would simply lift the sewing machine out when you wanted to use it. It was actually a beautiful piece of furniture that I’d like to get back. I think my Aunt has it. Well, to protect the desk, there was a solid piece of smoke-colored glass that you had to remove. This thing wasn’t exactly light. At this point in my life, the sewing machine was in our laundry room, the floor of which was tiled in pink ceramic. Wanting to show off the machine to my friends, I lifted off the glass and placed it on the floor, gently. I must have tapped the glass just so as to cause a split of about 6″ along one of the corners. Immediately, I freaked, knowing I just gave my Grandmother another argument with which to lambaste me aside from when I “broke her glass coffee table when I was three years old.” We dropped the sewing machine back into its place, and I went to retrieve the glass. Intelligent wonder that I am, I lifted the bottom of the glass by GRABBING THE EFFING BROKEN SECTION, and my index finger slid right along the sharp part of the cut. That took a nice 3/8″ long, triangle-shaped chunk out of my finger. (Do you have the willies yet?) Naturally, I started bleeding like the Dickens, but luckily my friend’s Mom was a nurse, so she raced right over and bandaged me up.

The rest of my major scars have somehow happened in the kitchen. The side of my right hand, where my thumb meets my wrist, is festooned with tiny circle scars from tapping my hand on the top of the oven when putting pans in or taking them out. I’ve found anything pasta-related can be dangerous. I have a small round scar on my right biceps muscle from where hot gravy bubbled up and popped and splashed on my arm. (NOT sauce… GRAVY!) I also have a fairly sizeable, 1.5″ round scar just above my belly button. I was cooking ziti and was wearing a thin tank top. As I lifted a piece of pasta out of the pan to test it (always have to test for al dente!), whatever water was inside the stupid little ziti came flying out and landed right on my stomach, the hot water soaking right through my shirt. It was pretty red for a couple of years, but now has faded to almost skin color. I mean really? As AJ Soprano once said, “MA! No fkn ziti?”

Now, if I ever disappear, at least you all can help identify my body. W00t.

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