A pair of parallel slashes, one on either side of my scrotum. I ignored a testicular torsion for three days, and my left testicle had to be amputated, and my right fixed in place.
Ogged was probably right.
Come now, we can't concede rightness to Ogged so early in the game! More gruesomeness, please.
I have four parallel scars on the top of my left wrist, inflicted by a weird cardboard-slicer thing at a job I held during college. At my last doctor's visit, my doctor--who has been my doctor since 1998--asked me whether I'd been cutting myself. It was rather embarrassing.
I also have webbed toes.
Frowner is a Deep One!
I've got a big scar on my wrist from surgery when I was about 9 and a pseudo-dimple from where I sliced my cheek open -- on a piece of glass, if I remember correctly, playing tag at about 6. (While staying at my aunt's house; I'm sure she was thrilled with having to deal with torrents of blood and explaining to my parents how I had mutilated myself.) Sadly, my bitchingest scar, on my knee and earned playing football in a gravel driveway, has long since faded to the point of non-grossness.
Inch-and-a-half-long, quarter-inch wide scar just above my right elbow from getting cut by the razor-sharp edge of a giant piece of steel conduit I was trimming for a college summer job. It was a gruesome-looking but completely superficial wound; didn't even hurt. I could just as easily have sliced my arm down to the bone in that incident, though.
My only notable scar is the one from my c-section.
Also, thanks everyone for caring--the fires here are turning the sky the most appalling shade of dark yellow and there's ash blowing everywhere, but Ventura's far enough north that we're not actually in any danger. Breathing kind of sucks right now, though.
I'd tell the story of my gnarliest scar, but I don't wanna get eaten by a shark.
6: But later you can show us your lung scars. Neat!
Had giant keloid scar sticking up off my knee from a track & field accident in 8th grade. Had plastic surgery to remove it in 9th grade, and had to wear a leg brace for six weeks so that I wouldn't bend my knee and stretch out the new scar, too. So now it's a boring (but much less gross looking) straight line scar.
All my most notable scars have been inflicted on others.
For me: pebble in my knee from a spill in a gravel driveway. One-inch scar on my thigh from an unfortunate encounter with a utility knife (bled like a sunnuvabitch). And my emo heart, from that first high-school relationship.
I've got a 3/4"x1/4" crescent on my knee -- tripped jogging downhill in Samoa, and landed on a sharp rock. It went deep enough that I could see shiny white stuff, which I figure was cartilage. I bandaged it up, and badgered the principal into using the school bus to drive me to the 'hospital', where the guy looked at the bandage job I did, said he wasn't going to undo it, and gave me a shot of antibiotics.
I couldn't walk properly for two weeks or so -- I don't know what it was, but I couldn't make my quads work. The leg would take weight, but to move it forward to take a step I had to swing it out and around like dead weight. I figure that had to be psychosomatic somehow -- a belief that if I moved those muscles something would come loose. But I was very relieved when my leg started working again.
I've also got a little scar that makes my right eyebrow grow funny. I fell off a freight train in the least interesting way possible.
I have a 4 inch jagged scar on the front of my ankle that I got by walking into something sharp submerged to my waist tsunami water in Phuket
this strikes me as an intresting conversation on a site where nearly everyone is pseudonymous.
All of my notable scars are psychic.
I once slashed my foot on an Hawaiian reef while surfing. The scar isn't that interesting, but the bleeding was profuse. Its rather nerve racking when you are bleeding into waters known to be frequented by tiger sharks.
This was like two days after I stepped on a sea urchin. Which was actually worse, but did not leave a scar.
Most of my interesting childhood scars have faded: the deep divot on my right heel, the dime-sized scar that looked like a bullet hole on my elbow. I suppose an X-ray would show the calluses where my broken bones have healed, but it's not really the same.
but it's not really the same
"Hey, wanna see my x-ray?"
My butt has a huge crack in it, wonder if I should post a pic?
I don't have any particularly huge scars, but I do have a small scar on my left eyebrow from falling face-first off the stage at a heavy metal karaoke night. It's far from my most noticeable scar but certainly my favourite.
Inch-and-a-half-long, quarter-inch wide scar just above my right elbow from getting cut by the razor-sharp edge of a giant piece of steel conduit I was trimming for a college summer job.
Daddy!
Oh, hey, I have a scar on my eyebrow from where my eyebrow piercing (DIY, thankyouverymuch) closed over after the police made me take it out after I got arrested at a protest.
I mean, I have a couple other minor piercing scars from just letting things close over--none in interesting locations--but I earned the eyebrow scar.
Also, I don't really recommend piercing your own eyebrow.
Phuket? Tiger sharks? Heavy metal karaoke? Testicular torsion? Sure makes my eyebrow scar from getting kicked by my sister look unimpressive.
And the one on my knee is from the only time I had to get stitches, when I tripped and fell into a standpipe while playing soccer in the yard. Standpipe, if you're here, I forgive you.
I have a feeling that this is a thread that will be referred to ever after, and that will remain a blank spot to me.
"Here be scarred monsters."
When I was seven, I stood up on a bus coming home from a field trip, fell, and the metal flooring gouged an inch-long gash in my knee.
When I was thirteen, I had a bag full of school supplies, and as I knelt down on it while retrieving a quarter for the pay phone, a pencil point went through the bag and into my knee. I felt the pinch but didn't think anything of it until later that evening when I noticed I had an eighth-inch of graphite sticking out of my knee. My dad pulled it out with tweezers. It hasn't really left a scar, but there is a permanent small bluish mark, like a tattoo.
This is now the same knee that appears to have a lump under the skin. I should make the doctor carve a smiley face.
We could probably combine all the eyebrow scar stories into a pretty kickass action film.
Oh yeah, eyebrow scars. I broke a pair of sunglasses with my forehead and some concrete after getting clipped by a pair of idiots walking in the bike lane. The good news from the emergency room: no new brain damage.
I'd be N.V.S. on a slab, I think. Everything has healed to where I can't find it even if I remember to look.
I'm told scurvy causes healed wounds to open back up, even a lifetime later, in its most advanced state.
a permanent small bluish mark, like a tattoo
I've got one of those in each palm; they're more than 25 years old, so I assume they're not ever going away. The one on the left palm is accompanied by scars from a chisel, a screwdriver and brand-new ultra-sharp pruning shears. Memo to self: be more careful, dude.
I had 2 little blackish dots on my arse for a long time - sat on a tub of freshly-sharpened pencils wearing thin cotton pyjamas - but I think they've gone now. No other scars that anyone could see without getting right up close and squinting and going "oh yeah" even though they can't really tell what I'm pointing at.
My scars are all faded and unimpressive. Snarkout's pseudo-dimple is very striking; a gouging well placed!
one on the back of my leg, a little pale purple indent, where kriston's dog bit me. one on each boob - one is from when i had to get a lump (was benign) removed. the other is from when i was marathon training and stuffed a couple of power gel packets down my sports bra because i had nowhere else to put them. when i reached down to use one partway through the long run, i realized the edge of it had kind of serrated the side of my breast.
Are people really submitting photos? Because I know this guy who got shot in the testicle...
My hands are covered in scars. From broken glass, teeth, minor stabbings, etc.
My most impressive scar is from my appendectomy, maybe 2 inches long and half an inch wide. It wouldn't have scarred so badly, but a few days after the surgery the incision started leaking. When I went back to the doctor, he told me I was probably allergic to the surgical sutures, and that he'd have to reopen the incision and let it heal from the inside out. I was expecting him to go get a tray and scalpel, but before I realized what was going on, he'd taken a (closed) pair of forceps and just gone "zip" down the incision.
Then I had to keep the incision packed with gauze and change the dressing every twelve hours of so. Imagine pulling off a bandaid, only the cut's an inch deep in your side. Fun times!
I'm told scurvy causes healed wounds to open back up, even a lifetime later, in its most advanced state.
wins
Wimpiest answer yet? All of my scars are from cat scratches.
When I was two years old I was running through the hall doing what two year olds generally do. Apparently I tripped over and smashed my head into a pot with a shrubbery in it. Gashed my forehead open with little bits of terracotta stuck in it. Blood everywhere. Pot and plant destroyed.
Father dearest being the great man that he was didn't take me to the hospital. He took me to the medical centre instead since he didn't think it was an emergency ("bah! Back in my day I had to go to school with a broken arm so don't tell me about pain boy").
Eight stiches. Scar still there, right in the middle of my forehead. So yeah, my first memory is of lying in a pool of my own blood.
Was I worried that it would be gross or that I would win handily? Anyway, I can't compete with nut loss, but in addition to the surgery scar, I have a 3" x 1/2" scar on my forearm, from putting my hand through a plate glass door when I was about four. In a fit of pique, I'm told. Then I have a series of one inchers: on my chin, from taking a tumble into an open stairwell when I was a kid, and breaking my fall with my chin on a doorknob; an elegant "j" shaped scar on my left index finger, which got caught in the middle of an unfolding ping-pong table; and a scar across the bridge of my nose, from flying glass from a shattered window. I used to have a pretty good burn mark from where I had ironed my pajamas while I was still wearing them (when I was about three), but that's faded. And I have one of those graphite marks that's about twenty years old.
I have a perfect crescent moon scar on my shin. I was unloading a sailboat from a VW and didn't notice for a good half-minute the exhaust pipe searing into my flesh.
I have a 2cm scar under my bottom lip where someone kicked me in the face [I bit through my lip]. Small scars on both knees [usual falling-over-when-a-child stuff]. One in the middle of my forehead [fell over and hit head on rock]. One in my eyebrow [someone hit me, with a bottle, I think]. One in the other eyebrow [fell off my bike]. Bite mark in my crotch [a dog attacked me on my paper round]. A couple of small nicks on my hands [paper knifes, staplers, that sort of thing].
No major scars.
Dime-sized scar on my thigh from a piece of wood that had a large rusted metal rod running through the middle and protruding from one end. I was about seven, and I remember that said piece of wood was essential to the game we had invented. I also once had a metal axle from a toy car sticking all the way through my foot, but I think both the entry and exit scars have now vanished.
13 - Sybil: Where in Phuket were you?
Oh yeah, and a small biopsy scar. But that's not really visible [healed surprisingly cleanly].
So, McG, you're uncoordinated and make people very angry with you...
re: 45
Heh. I was a very uncoordinated child [it wasn't until my late teens that I seemed to grow out of it]. It's only because I was aware of this and cowardly about heights that I've never broken a limb.
I'm remarkably unscarred. This one has faded to the point I'm not sure it would show up on a photo. I do have a smallpox vaccination scar, though, which only us old people will have.
re: 47
Oh yeah, I have a TB vaccination scar. Lots of people have those [the 'fashion' at my school was to run up and 'burst' the pustule that forms after the BCG by slapping it hard].
Have a 1-cm scar mid-forehead from diving headfirst (at age 2) for a toy that had rolled beneath my parents couch. It was a 70's era couch with knobby wooden legs. Still clearly visible 33 years later.
* Always lead with the head!*
Also got a 7" surgical scar from my heel up to base of calf, after I completely severed by Achilles. Apparently, some rooting around was required, prior to re-attaching the tendon segments.
I would've put severing my Achilles tendon before the forehead boink, but maybe that's just me.
How the fuck did you sever your Achilles, Calcixeroll? Please tell me it was something really exotic and unlikely to happen to me. Oh, Christ, I didn't even know I had a phobia about this, but now...
I have a perfect crescent moon scar on my shin.
Your honey branded you?
Jack,
Chronological seemed like a reasonable order?
As for the tendon (thanks for asking, btw), I had been working in the Coast range and took a day off for beer and frisbee on the beach. Sprinted for the disk, when I had a total yard-sale - it felt like someone had chucked a big rock at my ankle. Looked around, no one behind me (no kids either). Tried to stand up. Another yard-sale. No pain, my foot just wouldn't work. I sat down and my boss came over; he pushed on the area where my Achilles [usually] is, and it sort of went *squish*. Big bummer. Loads of 800mg IB + Hamm's for the drive back to [intermountain area].
Too much info?
Kidney transplantrecipient: After eight months, half inch wide, ten inches or so long, diagonal from the right side parallel to the navel downward to the center. My son (then three) thought it was totally cool when it had staples, but those are out now.
My wife, is very disappointed with her kidney donor's scar, which was never large and by now is almost invisible. You'd think the hero would get a cool prize, but no such luck.
Special note for the guys: six weeks after the surgery, a urologist removes a plastic stent that connects the new kidney to whaever it should be connected to, without making any incision at al and without anaesthesia. Think about it.
A couple small ones on my hands. One near my groin from getting a hydrocele fixed when I was an infant, and one pretty big one on my torso.
I've got some small ones on my hands, not really noticeable, from various cuts and scrapes, and a needle trail on my left forearm from getting blood drawn as a kid.
Oh, and a recent inch-long one just above my right buttock from scraping myself on the corner of my desk while standing up after bending over to get something out of a drawer.
Jumped from raft to shore at one of the takeouts on the Ocoee River, but missed the shore. Leg got caught under the raft: I have an 0.75-inch scar to show for it. (That thing took forever to heal, too.)
0.5-inch diameter scar from falling face-first onto a friend's concrete driveway.
And I'm missing half a fingernail from when I locked my finger in the my car door.
Tiny white chicken pox scars all over from a terrible bout with it at 4. Largish one on my stomach.
Giant but rapidly fading scar perpendicular to my hairline from getting the hiccups at an Unfogged meetup in January. Hiccups make me faceplant into wainscoting.
Broken heart from high school, which scar I forgot entirely about until my reunion last night.
You severed your Achilles playing frisbee?!? Oh, Jesus. I am never jumping again. Hell, I may never stand up again. Brrrrr.
Paul Reiser did a pretty funny bit on a talk show once about severing his achilles. Really. He was in Spain to run with the bulls and he described the training and psyching himself up and on and on for about five minutes, and it ended with "And then I went to get off the couch and caught my heel on it and vrrrt."
Who said Cala should take up Ultimate? OTOH, JM has experience with ballet and that has always struck me as dangerous for the tendons too.
Haven't both DominEditrix and mcmc suffered from torn Achilles tendons? Such that they had to change what they did for recreation?
61: Ok, I'll bite. What about it?
I have a long scar down by right shoulder from shoulder surgery. I had been cycling and wiped out, separating my shoulder.
I have a very, very small scar left from doing a face plant into the road when I was a kid. I leashed my husky to my bike. It was working well until a squirrel ran across the road. My dog ran across the road. My bike followed my dog. I flew forward into the road. A small rock went through my lip. Ouch.
I have a long scar down by right shoulder from shoulder surgery. I had been cycling and wiped out, separating my shoulder.
I have a very, very small scar left from doing a face plant into the road when I was a kid. I leashed my husky to my bike. It was working well until a squirrel ran across the road. My dog ran across the road. My bike followed my dog. I flew forward into the road. A small rock went through my lip. Ouch.
I did ballet seriously for, oh, eight years, and dance in general for about fourteen. Besides the shin splints, the ankle crackling (almost every step), and the creaky knees, I'm doing just fine. Everyone else got tendonitis by the time they were 14, but I never heard of anyone's severing their Achilles.
OT, but Kevin Youkilis may actually be a god. And he's Jewish, so he must be smart too.
Oh, Jesus. I am never jumping again.
Achilles injuries give me the willies too. A friend of my parents severed his doing something innocuous like running around the yard with his kids.
66: Too pathetic to share. Multi-year high school crush/best friend turns out to be far more wonderful than I'd remembered. Proposed to his girlfriend last week. I now plan on dying alone.
my appendectomy [snip] he'd have to reopen the incision and let it heal from the inside out
My appendix ruptured, and the doc left it open to heal since it so often gets infected. So it's a pretty wide, keloidy scar.
Best appendectomy scar was a guy who got one on my study semester in the Soviet Union. The scar looked like its from a cartoon, with a main cut and lots of perpendicular side cuts. Of course, the poor guy thought he was going to die and before surgery he wrote a note to his parents about what to do with his remains.
Oh, I also have a small scar on my right hand from a monkey bite.
My ski racing scar is tiny but I'm proud of it. I shinned a gate that wasn't in the snow deep enough, and the hinge broke and went into my knee.
Age 4: My 2 year old sister smacks me above the left eyebrow with the hockey stick kept beside the fridge. I think this was revenge for me biting her baby finger very, VERY hard in the playroom the year before. (We get along fine now. Honest.)
Age 15: I get the Harrington spinal fusion for my scoliosis and am blessed with a scar down the length of my spine, plus a bumpy crescent of scar on my right hip, where they removed some bone chips to make glue to hold the steel rods and hooks to my spine.
Age 45: Laparoscopic fibroid procedure for my canonically-sized external fibroid. (In case you were wondering: a large grapefruit.) I'm left with a slightly skewed belly button, two wee incisions that now look like wee smudges, and a centimeter long incision on my right that has faded to a dull brown and should be skin-coloured within another two years. I tried those silicone scar healing strips on them for a few weeks, but they kept peeling off and I got bored. They seem to be fading well enough on their own.
I almost forgot, awash int he drama of my tsunami scar, that my favorite scar is a 2 inch gash int he middle of my forehead that I got trying to swing the monkey bars on handed in preschool. I love it because my mom has an identical one in the same spot that she got around the same age. But hers is from pulling a hot iron by the cord, point first, onto her head, which is more hardcore.
Ah, fun. My two most impressive *looking* scars have unrecountable stories associated, so the next best are small ones that undersell the injuries. During my bartending days, my thumb had an unfortunate run-in with a spindle mixer, taking a dime-size plug out of the meaty part in back. It was weirdly bloodless, and I could see bone, muscle, and the tendon sliding around when I moved my thumb. It was so fascinating to watch that I refused a ride to the emergency room and thought through all the ways I might be able to keep it open permanently before finally giving up, packing the hole with neosporin and covering it with a band-aid, taking a few shots of Johnny Walker and going to bed. It's healed remarkably well considering.
Also behind a bar, I took the tip of my middle finger off with a cigar cutter. I've never had more trouble getting bleeding stopped, and thought the scar and loss of sensation would be significant. Amazingly, it's only visible now as an anomaly in my fingerprint pattern, and I have reasonably good tactile sensitivity.
I have a few other scars on my hands from bartending (broken glass); it never occurred to me that I'd be safer in front of a bar than behind one but it seems to be the case.
My two most impressive *looking* scars have unrecountable stories associated
Dude, duuuude, come on.
I am so glad that this thread occured on a day when I was far, far away from Unfogged. Enjoy your gruesome nauseating stories. I'm going to go think about kittens and happy places now.
I have a 1/2" scar on my upper lip from re-constructive surgery after a dog bit a large chunk of it off and ate it when I was 5. The scar has faded quite a bit now. It was pretty bad during grade and middle school.
I also have a 3" by 1/4" scar on my shin when I fell on a tree root and ripped it open to the bone.
Oh, hey, it's not quite a scar but it's distinctive: at the grade school playground, one of the pieces of primitive climbing stuff was....well, two of them were...a pair of 3/4" diameter corded steel cables, one hanging above the other and both loose. The idea being that one would hold the top cable and walk across on the bottom cable. It was popular (a rather good playground on the whole, actually) and there was often a line of children inching across it. It was perhaps four feet off the ground at the lowest point.
Of course, since the cables were loose, they swung. And since children do stuff like that, we swung them. On one memorable occasion, the top cable hit me in the face and broke my front tooth (And my teeth were never my best feature anyway.) while also knocking me to the ground.
We could not at that point afford cosmetic dentistry, so my tooth remained broken (I never got braces either; my teeth are, I repeat, not my best feature). It is to this day broken; a few years ago my dentist suggested that I get it fixed and I told him that if I died in a terrible plane crash I wanted my teeth to be easy to identify. I thought that was pretty funny, but he--being provincial, and a dentist--did not.
a dog bit a large chunk of it off and ate it
AAAAHHHHH! AAAHHHH!
I have a 1/2" scar on my upper lip
Wait a minute, hang on here, do I know you?
Wait a minute, hang on here, do I know you?
Doubtful. I live in North Dakota. I am pretty sure I haven't met any of the rest of you in person.
My relatives up there thought we were soft, and, you know what? they were right.
A doberman pinscher tried to take a hunk out of my leg one time, but I guess he wasn't trying very hard. I only got a couple of puncture-marks and a dark-maroon bruise the size of my head.
I live in North Dakota.
Farming, ranching, or missiles?
I work with computers. Two generations back there is both farming and ranching.
I work with computers.
I understand, keeping it all hush-hush and down-low, pip-pip, and of course we wouldn't want the foreigners knowing about the you know what (AITYD!).
I understand, keeping it all hush-hush and down-low, pip-pip, and of course we wouldn't want the foreigners knowing about the you know what (AITYD!).
You know, they got rid of a lot of the missiles here. I don't even think we would be the third largest nuclear power if we left the union anymore.
IDP Are you asking which town I live in or are you just asking if there are other towns than Elgin?
I have a six inch scar on my shoulder.
98: Stories, slolernr. We want stories.
KOBE HAS NO SCARZ! HE RULZ!
98: Stories, slolernr. We want stories.
A six-inch scar is its own story, isn't it? Or do you want pictures?
102: Of course we want pictures. And a story. Just make it up; we won't know the difference.
Which reminds me! My dad was born with only one arm, and people always ask me what happened. My favorite is the 'gator attack down in the bayou. Second favorite: shark attack while surfing in Australia.
Ha! Lies.
But he didn't scar, ogged.
I don't think you believe that, Ben.
We could probably combine all the eyebrow scar stories into a pretty kickass action film.
And here's the comic relief: When I was 10 or so, I got a small gash above my eyebrow. My parents were out of town, so my 19-year-old brother had to come to the emergency room to give legal consent. He told me -- and I believed him -- that they'd have to shave off my eyebrow and it would never grow back. I'd have to spend the rest of my tragic life wearing an eyebrow wig.
106: Gators and sharks are good, but there's a world of possibility out there.
- Paid way through school as knife thrower's assistant
- War wound from Grenada
- Defending you and siblings from grizzly attack
- Ice boating mishap
- Volunteered to test experimental piranha repellent
- War re-enactment gone terribly wrong
- Stood in wrong spot at pumpkin catapulting contest
- Giant space worms
I have a scar on the back of my right leg that looks like achilles tendon surgery. It's not. I stepped through the top of a large tin can as a child and tore up the back of my leg all good like. Needless to say, the crackers in the tin can were delicious.
I have one on my forehead from tripping over my fathers leg and crashing headfirst into a coffee table when I was 2 or 3.
And I have one on my nose where it was broken by one of my best friends (there's also a small white scar above my lip from the same incident). She had jumped on my back, pinned my arms behind me, and in trying to get her off my back, I fell forward onto the slick slate floor, breaking our collective fall with my face. Lots of blood.
No scar from when I got hit by a car though. Which is a shame.
109: That's funny. I have attempted the following, which actually worked one time:
Interlocutor: So, like, I hope I'm not breaking any ground rules here, but, what happened to your dad's arm?
Me: His arm? [long pull from cigarette; steely-eyed gaze to the horizon]. 'Nam.
It helps that he has a great sense of humor about it. ("Need a hand? I only got one!")
Stanley said I'm funny! Praise from Sir Hubert . . . .
It kind of weirds people out that we joke about it, but we do. "What has seven arms and sucks? The [last name] family!"
We're an odd tribe, I guess.
Totally boring scar - appendectomy, and it's nearly impossible to see now. The only redeeming value is that I can describe the way that my Hula-Hooping habit at that age seems to have advanced the onset of the infection.
109 -- I used to get asked how my dog came to have only 3 legs. Dog like that is too valuable to eat all at once.
I know there are people who freak out about that kind of stuff, but I'm all about the black humor [obligatory accusation of racism here]. My mom cracked a lot of jokes as she was dying of cancer.
It's too bad Stanley's mom has both her arms (I assume) or he could make a big deal out of how weird it is that other people's parents have two. In fact, he could claim to believe that he and his sibling were fashioned from his parents' arms, and that if they ever had another kid one of them would have to give up a corresponding arm. And then marvel at how other people's parents managed to get a kid some other way.
He's disarmingly charming, in fact.
he could make a big deal out of how weird it is that other people's parents have two.
Actually, most people have more than the average number of arms.
Your dad sounds all right, Stanley.
Actually, most people have more than the average number of arms.
This is true. What's your point?
I don't have very interesting scars. I have one on the palm of my hand from about a year ago. I tripped while running and slid on my palm for a bit. This was at the midpoint of a 70 minute run, so I had to go back with my hand dripping blood. I felt pretty hardcore (or, at least, more hardcore than normal).
I have another peanut-sized scar on my elbow from falling off my bike. I spazzed out leaving a stoplight and just tipped over. I felt much less hardcore than normal.
Many years ago, my best friend was fidgeting with a leatherman. It flipped open, and the blade went straight through his hand. The lesson here? Don't do stupid things with sharp objects.
Currently, my brother has scars on his arms from picking at poison ivy. One of his friends thought that my brother was cutting himself, and took my brother's denials as proof. The lesson here? Don't have earnest friends who care about your well-being.
I've got a 7'' windowpane scar (7" horizontally, but it's broken window shaped, so the scar is significantly longer, 30 odd stitches IIRC) that my friend insists on telling everyone is the fault of an australian shark. Decent, I suppose, but I now plan to blame it on 'Nam.
109, btw, is correct. I think I'm going to say that I got an Eskimo pregnant, and I had to defeat her brother with only a tusk.
I was doing some geological mapping on a mountain in New Zealand, and managed to slide 30 meters down a slope before being stopped by a tree. I though myself to be okay, until I noted a breeze around my nether regions. Skillfully using my compass's mirror, I discovered that my shorts were now ventilated and my butt cheek was cleft in twain. I struggled up the slope to a public path and happen upon a group of middle aged trampers. After pleasantries, I explained my situation, and the nurse in the group promptly had me downtrou out there in the open and temporally strap everything into place. Possibly the most traumatizing bit. There is still a four inch ridge down there.
Later on the same trip I smashed open a wasp's nest thinking it was a rock of significance. I no longer do field geology.
"No, the shark never touched me, but I gave myself this scar to honor how valiantly it fought before I killed it."
129: Not credible. Why would anyone opt for fresh Persian when there's the convenient store-bought variety?
So who says the shark was after ogged?
So who says the shark was after ogged?
Yeah, the thinking seems to be that shark attacks are generally sharks mistaking people for seals or sea turtles. Anything as skinny and brown as Ogged probably looks more like driftwood.
I have a small scar near my chin from a middle school slow dancing injury.
I have an immaculate incision and three immaculate conceptions.
Aren't surgical scars cheating a bit? Not getting at Ogged, but stuff done with malice aforethought strikes me as less impressive than accidental or combat injuries, which kind of happen.
Counting surgery, I can offer a straight line up my spine from the bottom of my shoulder blades to the base of my neck, from a childhood tumour, and a straight line down my chest, the length of my ribcage, from heart surgery a dozen years ago.
Basically, I look like I can be unzipped lengthwise.
Damn.
Best I can do is some cat scratches on my wrists and arms, making me look like a particularly wussy self mutilator/failed suicide.
My partner has all the ...interesting... scars in the family.
24: Cala, I have a graphite-pencil-tip tattoo dot as well, inside of right wrist, probably nearly 30 years old now. Can't remember how it happened exactly, maybe I fumbled the pencil and tried to catch it and speared it between schooldesk and wrist, or something like that.
I had a dime-sized birthmark under the outside corner of my right eye up until I was 13, which I had removed on the ostensible basis that it might one day get the cancer but mostly because I was tired of people making fun of it. I went on a trip with friends of the family immediately after, and the sutures itched, and I picked at it with no actual family members around to tell me not to, so it scarred up a bit more dramatically than it might have otherwise.
Half-inch scar under my chin from going down a playground slide headfirst in spite of repeated warnings not to. I actually lied about how it happened because I was so afraid I was going to get in trouble for improper sliding protocol.
Inch long scar on my forehead -- As I understand the story, I was playing basketball with my cousins at the age of two, and I got to be the ball. Coming home from the hospital after getting the cut stitched up, I fell on my way in the door and ripped the stitches.
Matching dime size patches on each forearm just below the elbow from two separate bike falls onto gravel. Lesson: don't try to turn your bike on gravel.
Scarring and gravel dent on right knee from the time some asshole flipped the quick-release lever on the front wheel of my ten-speed while it was parked at school, and I didn't notice it until I hit a speed bump leaving school. When I got home, I took secret pleasure in being able to say to my mom in so many words that "some asshole" did it, knowing she wouldn't take issue with bad language while my knee was torn to shreds.
Very faded scar on my palm: caught in a car door.
Scar tracing a conic section around half my thumb: twenty-year-old nerds living on their own for the first time generally lack modern conveniences like cutting boards. And first aid kits. It wouldn't have scarred if I had understood the concept of a butterfly closure or changing a dressing frequently, but as it happened I got nasty old gauze trapped in the healing wound.
Raised white keloid scar, half inch long, bottom of my ribcage on the right side. Not at all sure how it happened -- the first time I remember seeing it (at age 5 or 6) the only jungle-gym incident I could remember that might explain it was weeks or months past. Could quite possibly be an alien implant.
Thumb; Long straight'un - caused by knife, cooking while drunk...
Right wrist: Suicide scar! Not really, but it looks the part and I used to tell jokes about it until I grew up and got a clue. Diagonally across the inner surface. Cause: repairing a fence line in Queensland, I put a ratchet on the broken wire to drag it taut so I could tie it off...but didn't spot a rusted section a few feet further on. A few cranks of the ratchet, and it's tight...perhaps another for luck...WHANG! it breaks under plento tension, lashes past my eyes, slashes across the wrist. Blood everywhere.
Of course if I meant it I'd have cut down not across...
Left ankle - The daddy. Doesn't look much now, but this was the one that nearly killed me. Seriously. I barked it on a beam of jarrah timber working on a building in the West Kimberley, forgot about it, and it picked up a tropical germ of some kind.
Suddenly I was as weak as a kitten, though nowhere near as cute, running a temperature, headaches, seeing spots, and the calf was going purple and hugely swollen. There was talk of air evacuation, but eventually the RFDS prescribed over the radio, 2000mg of antibiotics a day, half penicillin, half tetracycline. Which fixed the spooky systemic things within 24 hours - I LOVE MODERN MEDICINE - but it took two weeks to overcome the bugger. I expected it to burst, but no such luck.
In much the same way that media reporting on child abduction causes parents to obsess about this relatively small risk, this thread is giving me an irrational fear that one of my children will be mutilated in a freak accident.
This must be a primal fear, because the insurance industry gleefully writes accidental death and dismemberment policies that cost next to nothing to insure and can be sold at an enormous profit.
FWIW, my best scar is a barely visible notch on the end of my thumb. I was a working the "head catcher" on a cattle chute at age 11 or 12, and I got my thumb wedged between the chute and the post at the moment a cow jerked back. I was able to watch in horror for what seemed like a couple of seconds before my thumb popped open like a zit and expelled its contents on the ground.
In retrospect, the fact that my father didn't rush me off to a doctor, but instead sat me down in a chair to wait until he was finished working all the cattle, strikes me as an act of negligence. (I believe I have previously mentioned my father's "tough it out" philosophy of child-rearing.)
Ah yes, head catchers; a great way to get hurt. Especially because if the lever goes flying up in your face it usually means you've got a really angry beast to deal with as well as the sudden dentistry.
if the lever goes flying up in your face it usually means you've got a really angry beast to deal with as well as the sudden dentistry.
Yeah, I did that once and caused my father to get whacked in the head really bad. I also once failed to close the mechanism in time, resulting in a cow lunging through the gate and getting stuck at the mid-section and almost dying. It's a good thing I got good grades, because I really wasn't cut out for farming.
The good news is that the new-fangled self-closing head catchers have made the position of Little Boy Who Works the Lever obsolete.
Ah, scars, the sign of a life well-lived. Lessee, dime-sized area under my chin where no hair grows (face plant in grocery cart ~4-5), wishbone scar running the length of my left forearm (the old running into the glass door syndrome, also ~4-5), appendix scar (almost invisible, the drain tube scar shows up better, age 20), miscellaneous scars on my hands (hey, if I keep picking the scab off, I'll get a scar and be cool!, ~childhood).
The most distinctive body mod I have is my right index finger, which is missing its left side down to the first knuckle (and is now known as "skinny"). I was trimming a poster for Hallmark ("When you care enough to bleed like a stuck pig") and, due to the crappy table and lousy cutting mat, the blade hopped and left a bit of white edge. The area I was working in had too many people in it, so rather than turn the poster and reset, I just back-cut. Felt a bump, and looked down to see a chunk of me on the knife blade. Said bad words, bled heavily, went to the hospital, where I sat in the ER wating room for 1.5 hours, forced to watch Maury, Fear Factor and Seinfeld. That's where the real scars come from.
1. Left index finger - inch-long, plain white scar, with some valleying of the flesh. Origin: swordfight with dear friend.
2. Right elbow - 2-inch raised keloid scar, roughly oval. Origin: skateboarding disaster (the little downhill wobble that becomes complete destruction). Jean jacket took most of the impact. It mostly stays in the closet, now.
3. Left hand/arm/elbow - Various, from contusions and abrasions. Origin: motorcycle crash. Recommendations: Either stop accepting rides from people who are obviously drunk or drive motorcycle myself.
I have had far too many drunken cooking accidents. Two Thanksgivings ago, I was slicing up a loaf of bread with a shockingly sharp serrated blade. It bounced a little and plunged deep into my left thumb. Fucking Pabst.
I've almost cut off the first two fingertips of my left hand while chopping onions, sliced deep into my palm while stupidly cutting something in it, burned myself on pie pans and toaster ovens, and on and on. I now only cook when I'm sober, and that has made all the difference. I also try to only use my own knives, as I seem prone to accidents with knives whose balance I'm unaccustomed to.
Wow, y'all are damaged. All I've got is a decent-sized surgical scar in my side from my first year of existence.
I love this thread. Most emphatically not for its gross factor (along with Jackmormon, tales of Achilles tendons terrify me). *
I've learned quite a lot about people's lives, esp. childhoods. Even the variations on eyebrow and knee injuries are interesting.
Aren't surgical scars cheating a bit? Not getting at Ogged, but stuff done with malice aforethought strikes me as less impressive than accidental or combat injuries, which kind of happen.
I don't think so. Having weathered a childhood tumour and heart surgery is pretty damn impressive and has no doubt affected who you are.
*On preview, noticing the potentially confusing phrasing there, but I think I'll leave it. Jackmormon haunts my nightmares!
(Little Boy Who Works the Lever)==(Clue-deficient Pommy Apprentice)
But much the same principle...
re: 144
I used to cut myself cooking a lot [hence nicks and things on hands]. I find that the only sure fire way not to is, as you say, to use your own knives, or at least decent sized knives. Small knives or knives with edges that don't curve also equal sliced fingers. Proper 10" chef's knives or cleavers, no problem.
Aren't surgical scars cheating a bit?
No way, dude; I think you win.
My worst, which I can actually see if I look hard enough, is from slicing a bagel on the morning of a law school exam.
My mother had no decent knives. Cheap sheet-metal serrateds. My first exposure to really competent cooking from scratch was the many times I pulled KP, which was the first time I saw what could be done with them. When I moved out I followed the advice in books and acquired used knives at garage sales and have never looked back, very seldom cutting myself.
I used to work in a restaurant where the chef maintained order (or instilled terror) by throwing knives. He never really threw to hit anyone, but he was very good at slinging a blade across the room and making it stick to the cardboard boxes of paper goods that were stacked in the corner of the kitchen. Fortunately I was on reasonably good terms with him because I was smart enough to kiss his ass and stay out the way, but others were not so lucky.
He was marginally functional alcoholic illegal immigrant from Jamaica. Soon after he got fired, the restaurant burned down. The police said it was arson, and the owners were totally convinced that he did it, but they never pinned it on him.
God, those were some good times.
Two smashed thumbs caught in a car door, two occassions, both thumbs.
Like Blume in 9 I had a rad keloid tumour on my right knee, removed in 9th grade by Dr Carlos Fuentes on Long Island who told me I was the whitest person he had ever done plastic surgery on.
The keloid was cool pre surgery because it was sort of like fickle foam, changing colours in different temperatures. But then it went away, and I was in a knee brace; 2 days after the knee brace came off, I made the brilliant decision to jump on the hood of someone's car in a parking lot at night and ripped the left side of the incision point open. Now the scar covers nearly my entire kneecap.
My partner has an excellent scar from surgery to fix his distal bicep tendon rupture from last year. If I can get him to pose I'll add it to the Flickr pool.
but stuff done with malice aforethought
what about nonconsensual stuff done by other people with malice aforethought?
In which case, I've a few. Nothing terribly impressive or high calibre though.
Man, I got nothing. My childhood accidents were all non-scarring (lots of sprained ankles). I've got a barely-visible IV scar on my left wrist that was probably from when I got an ambulance ride to the hospital for epiglottitis at age 3. (Someone said upthread that their earliest memory is of lying in a pool of his own blood; one of mine is being inside an oxygen tent.) I've got a tiny pockmark above my left eyebrow. My many cat scratches have all faded, and even the part of my arm which I regularly raked across the sharp corner of my medicine cabinet (now padded with a bandaid - the cabinet, not my arm) has healed up.
The only scar I have that looks remotely interesting is on my left shoulder. The combination of a heavy bookbag and several bras with a small metal ring in the strap that I was wearing around the same time (late high school - early college) resulted in a round, red scar that looks not unlike a cigarette burn. That one I might have to put scar treatment on if I ever want to wear thin straps or a racerback to the beach without getting horrified/pitying looks. But leave it to me to get a scar from a tragic BOOK accident.
158: IV scar? How do you scar from an IV? I was on a (24 hr) IV for a month and a half once, and don't think I have any scars from that.
Oh, I do have a dent in my forhead. Yes, dent, not scar, from where my mother dropped me on an exposed bolt-head as a baby. Everone seems to think that explains a lot of things, they just won't expalin what, exactly.
But leave it to me to get a scar from a tragic BOOK accident.
Sounds like a job for Dr. Carlos Fuentes.
Two mirror-symmetrical, 4" long surgical scars on the top of each foot, right over the big toe and extending back. Two rather more faded scars on each knee from separate falls.
I guess I believe in bilateral symmetry?
You're not alone, magpie. I've also got nothing.
My left arm is a little bit askew, from when I broke it when I was 6 years old. You wouldn't notice it if you just looked at the left arm, but when I hold out both arms, you can see the difference. But that's not really a scar.
This thread is interesting. Without reading here first, I would have said that I have the usual collection of gravel, bottles, knives, rings, boots, barbed/razor wire, pellets, etc.... plus the usual mechanical & sports injuries but nothing worth mentioning...
I'm not sure `the usual' is, though.
My most visable scar is between the eyebrows just above the bridge of my nose from a cross- check in ice hockey from high school. Then I have a 4" x 1/2" gash on my right calf from a bike accident when I was 14. Oh yeah, a small chunk of my left tricep is gone from where that AK 47 winged me.
How do you scar from an IV?
It's the best explanation I've been able to come up with. I've had them as long as I can remember, and when they were more distinct they were two little V-shapes, both pointing at the vein along the back of my left wrist. It would have been a long, bumpy and slippery ride to the emergency room (lots of potholes, pouring down rain, flooded-out freeway), so even the best EMT might have had trouble getting the IV in right and having it stay in.
165: I guess that makes sense, especially if you scar easily. I don't, which explains the lack of IV scars even though it was done so many times.
Speaking of lying in a pools of blood, that's one of the fun things about continous IV's; every once in a while they just back up --- always seems to be in the middle of the night. I was a kid (10 or so) at the time and the memory of waking up in a strange place covered in (my) blood is a pretty vivid one. I had 3+ weeks before they could put a catheter in, which was better.
Oh yeah, a small chunk of my left tricep is gone from where that AK 47 winged me.
That's the sort of thing that'll make you pay attention! I caught a little splash once, and that's more than enough for me.
I have a small scar on my left side at the bottom of my rib cage where my girlfriend tried to stab me with a butcher knife one night. As she lunged I twisted out of the way so I only got opened up a little bit but here it is, thirty years on, and I can still see it and reminisce - ah, young love.
the usual collection of gravel, bottles, knives, rings, boots, barbed/razor wire, pellets, etc....
That's pretty much me, with the exception of pellets. Rules about guns were to be strictly observed. I think my eyebrow scar is from being thrown from a horse into crushed gravel when I was four, which also gave me a little moustache of parallel lines that are still just visible if you look close. I think my mom has mostly recovered from the trauma of watching a horse dance over the supine body of her four-year-old, but somehow there was never a lot of riding after that (the horse belonged to the neighbor).
My favorite scar is a fairly prominent half-moon on my left index finger, which I got from making the bed when I was in high school (pulled bedspread up, finger caught sharp edge of reading lamp on headboard). I now mostly stay away from such dangerous activities, although I did recently gash the hell out of one finger on my own toenail while turning the mattress over. I also have a nice collection of paralell lines on my upper abdomen from catching the edge of my ribcage on the garage roof while dropping into the truck bed below, but that's mostly faded.
She was drunk.
Also I stepped on a sting ray once in the middle of the night. Not a real big scar either but it bled like crazy and WOWEE did it hurt.
I walked maybe a third of a mile to the West pier at Anna Maria Island, bleeding like a pig, where some helpful fishermen taught me this: if you ever step on a sting ray, submerge the afflicted member into a bucket full of very hot water. Instantly it hurts only a tenth as much.
She was drunk.
I'm not sure that really helps.
I have #1, but without the amputation. They say the little guy dies if ignored for 12 hours; I went under the knife after 15, but I got lucky.
Dammit, Wrongshore, we've already used up our quota of leg-crossing and pained expressions for the day.
Someday I will tell you the whole story. It involves the movie Pretty Woman, a frozen burrito juggling act, and it all happened on Cinco de Mayo.
Wrongshore is trying to unite all threads into a contrapuntal song of painful urination.
this thread is giving me an irrational fear that one of my children will be mutilated in a freak accident.
The acquisition of the first childhood scar is totally traumatizing. To the parent.
Huh, I kind of thought it was more like the first dent in the door of the new car, in a "glad that's over with" sort of way. But I guess some people freak out about door dings, too.
But I guess some people freak out about door dings, too
Or soccer balls.
PK's first scar was from HOT OIL in the FACE and it was all MR B'S FAULT.
So yes, traumatizing.
But I guess some people freak out about door dings, too.
The first new car I can remember my parents buying was a little Subaru wagon around 1981 or '82. On the day they brought it home, my little brother (young enough to still be in diapers) ran outside and beat on the hood with a golf club. My dad was looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
Pools of blood? Oh yeah. When I had my appendix out (Maundy Thursday 1977), I had little prep time (maybe an hour from being told my white count was north of the stratosphere and this was the appropriate action to take and getting the injection of liquid valium to knock me out) so I came out of the surgery, which took longer than usual since the little anachronism had snuck behind my intestines and sat there festering for some time, restless and unruly. At one point that evening, I threw my arms around and popped the iv tube in my arm out of the bag of juice. I have a very vivid memory of laying there in the bed, looking at the pool of red liquid the size of my head and growing rapidly, and thinking "That's mu blood. I should do something about that." Then I passed out. Fortunately, my family was there and grabbed the tube and pinched it off and called the nurses.
My best scar: a tiny black crescent on the outer edge of my right iris. BB gun, age 6.
Someone upthread mentioned an allergy to suture material, with subsequent removal and healing from the inside. Same thing happened to Mrs. Chopper. For her epesiotomy.
My January Unfogged meetup scar is on the Flickr group. It's rather small and not as disfiguring as it was when I went to teach my first class that semester (swollen blue forehead with a giant gash down the middle). I am pleased that no medical attention has had few ill effects, aside from a slightly pink, shiny dash across my skull.
187: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Ya'll cringing about the torsion can just go get stuffed now.
Burn scar on the left side of my chest,\ down my left arm, and around my waist like a belt. Pulled a pan of fried chicken off the stove when I was two. Six months in the hospital--doctor said I would have died had Mom not stopped screaming long enough to pull the t-shirt soaked in Crisco off my stupid little toddler body. Some say the world lost a coin flip that day.
Good news: missed my face and my year-old brother who was sitting right next to me.
Bad news: people stare at the beach.
And please stop using "torsion" and "testicle" in the same comment!