My Favorite Scars

Stories my skin tells

My Number One favorite scar is my scar from chocolate, because, come on, how many people can claim that one? It’s just a little tiny thing, about a half inch long on my left pinky finger. I got it when I was a teenager at my best friend’s house one hot weekend in late spring. We had been outside in the backyard trying to beat the heat in her Doughboy pool because, trust me, even late spring in Fresno is no joke (May record was 106 F, 41 C). So, obviously, you don’t keep milk chocolate in the cupboard there, you keep one bar in the fridge and the rest in the freezer for later. Well, somebody had already eaten the softer bar, so I took out a frozen bar and tried to break it, and when I did, it cut me. It’s a scar I will always treasure.

Another good one was the spring the family reunion was held at my cousin’s ranch in Idaho. I don’t know if you have any cowboy relatives or friends, but they purely love to tease tenderfeet, as they call non-cowboys. That week was a big sheep shearing and calf branding, and I saw a lot of fascinating things, but I missed one crucial element. My boy cousins kept trying to get me to eat the delicacy called “mountain oysters” but because I didn’t like clams I figured I wouldn’t like fresh-water oysters, so I wouldn’t try any and never budged, even though the teasing kept up all evening.

The next day, I learned that “mountain oysters” are actually bull testicles, and I was forever grateful that I had held my ground. The scar is only tangentially related. It came when I opened up a gate for the truck to drive through on the way in to the proceedings, and a piece of barbed wire snaked across my right hand and gave me a curving cut on the web near my thumb, but it’ll always remind me of that camaraderie, and I smile when I see it.

There was a mean girl in elementary school, and I told her if she was ever line leader, I’d skip school. As it turned out, I had chicken pox her week, so she didn’t get to boss me around. In between the chicken pox scars, I’ve also got a lot of cat bite scars from cats who lived with me and who I loved very much, so both my arms are a Jackson Pollock splatter painting of white reverse-freckle scars among regular brown freckles. They unsettle some people, but I like ‘em.

One scar I don’t love, but I respect, is an eight-inch-long scar curving below my right shoulder blade. Almost two years ago I had lung surgery, and it hurt like a son-of-a-gun! I survived it, retired early, and changed my life to live my dream of being a writer while traveling the world. Maybe I could get a pretty vine tattoo’d on that scar to honor how I got where I am today. I did finally buy a Speedo racing swimsuit that shows it — I’m ready to own it.

Just like the lines on our faces show our character, the scars on our skin show our stories.