Last evening, I had the following conversation with my wife.
Wife: Next time don't volunteer me to do salad for the church gathering.
Me: I thought salad would be easy.
Wife: Easy? Just who is going to grate the carrots.
Me: I'll help and we can get it done in no time.
Wife: You? Grating the carrots?
Me: Why? How difficult can it be? Pass me the grater.
I proceed to grate the carrots on the grater but before long, my grip slips and instead of carrot, I am feeding my thumb into the grater.
Me: OUCH!!!
Wife: How bad is it?
Me: Not too bad. Just a single cut. Look it is barely bleeding.
I keep grating the carrots without incident .....for another couple of minutes. Then, my thumb goes flying into the grater again!
Me: OUCH!!! OUCH!!! and TRIPLE OUCH!!! Man down! Man down! It's a gusher!
This time I achieved three cuts and my thumbnail split down the middle about half way. There's enough blood to get Dracula excited.
Wife: That's it! Stop trying to help me. Get out of the kitchen and stop bleeding into the salad!
And that, is pretty much how my thumb got its new scars. It is throbbing with pain to remind me not to send it into harms way again; which in turn got me thinking about the other silly things that I have done in my life and the various scars that my body sports as a result.
My very first battle scar was when picked up when I was a mere toddler. I declared war on a glass door. Well, actually I am told that the door was closed but I chose to walk right through it. Anyway, the entire glass pane shattered. Again, I am told that I could have been decapitated but I got away with a bad cut on my middle finger on my left hand. It resulted in a 2 cm long scar with a curious knot-like shape in the middle.
Next, I got a scar in the shape of an eye and about the same size on my right calf. I think that was from a bicycle accident. Then, I picked up my third scar when they abducted me when I was eleven and they did all kinds of weird experiments on me which they collectively referred to as an appendectomy.
My first visit to the British Council when I was twelve, to see a concert, left me with a chipped tooth after I missed a step coming down the stairs and decided to try to take a bite out of glorious Ol' England. Tooth versus concrete was not really a fair fight.
Bad shoes have left me with misshapen feet. Playing basketball and an ill conceived stunt involving jumping down a stairwell has left me with damaged ankles but you cannot see it on the outside. Well, since we have entered the body cavity, I might as well throw in the fact that I have 3 prolapsed and herniated spinal discs.
I think that is about it. Bet all of these are going to ache more as I grow older. How about you? Any distinguishing marks or scars with stories to share?
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What sooths me
1 month ago
24 comments:
I'm trying not to laugh as I type this - your post was so humorous though you may be right about things like your ankles paining you as you age.
I actually was lucky and only have 2 scars - one on my finger from falling down the cement basement steps with a glass pie plate full of potatoes and the other resulted from being excited to see dad home from a trip of lumber buying. I thought I had bent under the wood sticking out the back but had not and my poor nose took the brunt of impacting a 2-by-4 at full speed. Needless to say it broke the nose, blackened the eyes and I think that was the worse headache I've ever had :)
I used to have a rotary chcolate grater... saves a lot of grated digits, not convenient on the ole washing-up...
I have a lot of scares. Can't even name them all. But the one on my right hand is from a dog fight that I tried to break up. Silly me, what was a I thinking. My husband has a bite mark in the same spot! That is so fun. He wasn't around when I got mine though.
Hope your fingers feel better soon. I'm sure you won't be volunteering your wife for salad anymore. :) he, he.
What a hoot...! How did the salad turn out?
I have lots of battle scars. Gosh! When I was four years old I fell on a sidewalk and broke my hand. Another time I was playing in the living room (a no, no...) and I fell against the coffee table and cut my earlobe off. It was reattached, and no one can tell, but it was intersting riding to the hospital with my earlobe in my mother's hand.
I have a dozen nicks and bruises at any given time (I always have physical jobs), but the two that remain visible today are four stitches from a cut to my right middle finger from a meat slicer I was carelessly cleaning at the time(at 17), and a palm-sized second degree burn on my left calf from a blow torch when I had a job cutting up scrap metal (at 20). It happenned roughly sixteen years ago and the skin has only started growing back pink and healthy in the last five years.
Like you, I declared war on an inanimate object when just a tad. It wasn't a glass door for me though. I took a dislike to a certain shelf at the bottom of a two-step stair between the living room and kitchen. One day I came barrelling through the kitchen, threw myself off the top step head first, right into the corner of the offending wood shelf. This resulted in copious amounts of blood, according to my mother (I don't remember that far back). I guess my skull was softer then.
There would be a different result if I tried that now, by golly!
Sorry squirrel you are written off
with all these bumps and bruises
I have only one fake teeth. That's what you get when growing up with three brothers. I teased one when I was small and he knocked it out. Otherwise he is very nice.
I wish I could learn the trick of being so incompetent that no one wants me to do anything for them. You should hold a class or something. I'd sign up.
Many bump and bruises as a child, but nothing that would leave a scar. I saved that event when I was an adult. Manage to leave 3 digits of my left hand in Lake Superior. I do managed just fine without them.
The inanimate objects of the world are out to get you! My first scar came from me, picking a fight with a glass table, at the age of three or so; very similar to your glass door encounter. It's a lovely slash on my chin... it makes me look tough! :)
I have too many to write about here, but oddly nearly all of my childhood scars are between my right knee and ankle. And I know the story for every single one. In college I skinned my entire right side from shoulder to ankle in a skateboarding accident and all I have to show for it is a barely visible scar over my right elbow about the size of a dime. My most prominent scar is from the car accident at 19, but it was not from the accident. It happened when the emergency responders pulled me out of the car through the back window (the car was crushed). It's a one inch crescent by my right knee. I do have one long one on my left hand that has been there as long as I can remember and I have no idea where it came from. My mom has no memory of it either. Can you be born with a scar?
Ooo Janice,
Hitting the 2 by 4 sounds excruciating. Anyway, less scars are actually better. I had a friend who got hit by one of those parking booth bars as it was descending and it landed right on the bridge of the nose. Ouch.
glrdwood,
I should not be allowed near any grater.
cabcree,
I had a dog bite too but there is no scar. But it is so cute that you and your husband have matching scars.
Jo,
The salad turned out fine after I was ejected from the kitchen. Your earlobe experience trumps any of mine!
blackcrag,
your burn really sounded bad. Glad it is beginning to fade. I was branded once with a heated screwdriver in a childhood prank gone wrong. It was painful and the smell awful but no lasting scar.
Marja,
Hope your brother has made it up to you.
XuP,
You can't be trained to be so incompetent. It requires a natural talent.
Ruth,
Sorry about your digits. How did you managed to do that? No sharks in Lake Superior, right?
kimber,
about the inanimate objects plotting to get us, I believe it is true!
geewits,
Well, glad you got away with only a scar from your car accident. As for being born with a scar, that would be good grounds to take the doctor to court. :)
I have fifteen surgical scars but the one that bugs me most is the one on my left eyelid from '82 when I lost the eye and the lid had to be reattached. As I age the lid is drooping. *sigh* everything sags with age I guess.
My younger son learned the sme lesson about grater a week ago, only with less distaterous results.
I have a sozable sacr on my left calf from being in the wrong place at a party when two dogs took a disliking to each other. A little scar on my chin from falling off a slide when I was 6. And a faded C-section scar.
I think the part of what your wife said that you really need to pay attention to is "Next time don't volunteer me" !!
Mark,
15 times? Wow. In the greater scheme of things, I think drooping eyelids will be the least of our drooping problems! :)
cz,
They really should make a more idiot proof grater. I definitely will be more careful about "volunteering" my wife since I get injured when she in turn conscripts me.
You had me Laughing! Thank you Thank you!
Some scars I remember how I got, and some I forgot.
kat,
Laughing at my misery? You're welcome. :)
mago,
Ah, we should gather round a campfire and tell long elaborate stories over each of our scars. It would be fun.
Well you certainly have had an interesting life, scarwise. I'm afraid I was laughing too at the litany as it progressed. Sorry.
You certainly made sure you will not be asked to help in the kitchen with that chore again. Wise if a little scared man.
I only have some faded scars on my leg for having a varicose vein stripped long ago. I don't think they do that any more, but maybe they do.
jmb,
Stripping a vein doesn't sound very appealing to me. I sure hope it isn't done anymore.
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