Heather in Paradise

I’m back from the depths of despair that is a home life without the internets. I actually had to TALK to M. a few times in the last couple of days (the horror, oh god, the horror) AND pick up a book, it was DISGUSTING and I don’t recommend it.

I gave Rivergirl the same Blogger homework that I drew, just to make it easy on us both and to deflect a bit of attention from the fact that I’m only just now turning it in. Those of you who live in the First World won’t understand, but I have this to say to those of you who live in the First World: Bite Me. Live with CableMenos for a few weeks and then come talk to me.

The reason I was out of cable internet? Still not sure. But a big truck drove down our street the other night and snapped some wires, and then a Cablemas guy came out to hook up the cable of someone across the street, and our guess is he simply unhooked ours to put the new cable in, to save time. The people in the office said they had no idea why our internet didn’t work, but that they would look into ahorita (or “little now,” which should mean faster than ahora, or right now, but it never does mean that, now does it?).

My assignment: Show Some Skin:

How did you get those scars? The one on your thumb is from when you were three and you wondered whether scissors could cut skin. The one on your stomach is from your emergency appendectomy. Your boss figured you had to be in the hospital, because it was the only reason you’d ever be late to work without calling.

Your scars indicate what type of life you’ve lived. Whether you’re athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it.

Hold onto your horses, Gentle Reader, for here I give you the rundown of my scars:

1. Left elbow: scar is a small, round circle of burned/grafted-looking skin. This one happened when I was about 7 months old and my too-young-to-have-me mama left me home alone while I slept on her and my dad’s bed. It was raining outside and she had to drive my dad to work. Since I had (allegedly) not rolled over yet, she figured it was OK. She returned to the house to find that I had awoken, rolled over, and fallen between the bed and the room’s plugged-in space heater. I had fairly bad burns on my hands (from trying to push the space heater away from me), but the only scar I got was a small, perfectly-round circle on my left elbow. To this day (and bear in mind, I am nearly 40 years old), whenever my mom asks me to do something I don’t want to do, I find a way to show that scar so that she feels guilty and goes to make me a fruit pie or something with melted cheese. Ah, mom-guilt, how useful thou art.

2. Under my lower lip: I’m a lucky person, my scars are mostly unnoticeable unless I point them out. This one could have been bad. I was pretty small, a toddler, I guess, and running down the sidewalk. I hit an uneven patch and bit it pretty hard, and apparently the two teeth I had in my lower jaw pushed part of the way through the skin just below my lower lip. Probably scared the crap out of my poor mom, but I’m no worse for the wear.

3. Right hand: Small, half-moon shaped scar just below my thumb. I was in 5^th grade and was playing wiffle ball with the deaf/mute girl neighbor that I hardly knew. She went to a “special” school and so didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood, but I was fascinated by her and played with her any chance I got. When I dove for the wiffle ball she hit, I landed in what at first felt like a “pricker bush.” When I stood up and looked in awe at my hand, which was running with blood, I was speechless and wordlessly showed my companion my hand. Since she couldn’t hear, I didn’t speak. She made a grunting sound that startled me into action and I realized that, holy crap, I had fallen on a broken bottle hidden in the grass, I was cut and I was bleeding like crazy. I ran home crying to my mom, who took me to the hospital to get stitched up. I never saw that girl again. I think about her from time to time and wonder if she ever thinks of me.

4. Right knee and right upper thigh: I have a tiny round scar on my right kneecap, received somewhere around the summer after 6^th grade. I was riding my bike one summer along Sheridan Road, almost at the local convenient store, The Cheese Shack, when someone I considered popular called out to me from the other side of the street to get my attention. I stopped so fast the handles shifted and I got caught up between the handles and the bike frame. Right around that same time period, my brat of a little sister plugged in my curling iron and left it burning away in the middle of our pigsty of a shared bedroom. While looking for something under the bed, I sat on it and it burned the hell out of my right upper thigh. That long, purplish scar has pretty much faded to nothing by now.

5. Left eye: I went a looooong time in between scars. My next one happened when I was 20 years old and in the Army, playing on the 8^th Army softball team in South Korea. Early one morning while playing shortstop (not my usual position) and practicing turning double plays, I caught a forceful throw from First with my left eye. Reeling from the impact, I put my bleeding head in my glove and rocked back and forth, willing myself not to pass out. I wound up with a concussion, a fractured cheekbone, and a blowout fracture of my eyeball. By the marvelous luck I’ve had my entire life, I had no serious lasting damage, besides some lingering double vision when lying down watching TV. The small scar, however, does make my eyebrow hairs grow funny around it, and I have a much higher chance of getting glaucoma in my dotage. Like I care what happens in my dotage. I say that now, of course. Because I’m not even sure I know what “dotage” means.

6. Right wrist: In my late 20s, I developed a ganglion cyst on my right wrist that made it difficult for me to bend it. I’ve read that in “olden” times, these cysts were called “bible bumps” because the way the doctors would break up the cyst was they would whack the shit out of it with a big bible. Fuck that noise, I got myself a plastic surgeon. I was all high on the happy juice for the surgery, and the doctor amused me later by telling me about two funny things I allegedly did. First, I supposedly said, “Hey, Doc, since you’re already here and in the scrubs and everything, how about you give me bigger tits?” And second, when he was finished and told me he removed the cyst, I apparently asked him to show it to me, which he did. I have no recollection of either of those events, Senator.

7. Both legs: Over the last couple of years I’ve suffered from a number of nasty abscesses on my legs that have grown from minor cuts, scrapes, or ingrown hairs. Several were severe enough to leave round, cigar-burn looking scars that have killed any chance I ever might have had of looking like Barbie.

8. My heart: This is the big one, full of all these scars that can’t be seen, but that have informed every aspect of my personality and my life. Starting with my father’s absence and, well, never ending, my heart is no different from anyone else’s heart: stabbed, cut, stitched, bleeding, bruised, pounded, and torn, but still remarkably young, fresh, strong, proud, loving, determined and full of hope. They didn’t make it a muscle for nothing, y’all.

That concludes my fragile, weak little body’s catalog of scars. Now tell me about yours.