Scars

This post is dedicated to all the people I know with worse scars than me. I love you.

I have a scar on my forehead from where I fell and hit my head on the sink after my sister had her tonsils out and I was, probably, trying to get some attention for myself. I was young, a size and age to imagine myself as now would feel like pondering infinity. I don't remember it happening, but I have a reminder of the stitches on my forehead whenever I furrow my brow. That's the only time it's noticeable.

I have a mark on my tongue, not unlike other marks on my tongue, which I know to be the scar from a tongue piercing I had in college. Yes, I got it because of a girl and yes, it probably contributed to me losing my virginity. Score. I couldn't talk for two weeks and I could only eat KFC mashed potatoes and it was totally worth it. I took it out for orientation at Toys 'R' Us that fall and by the time I got outside, the hole had closed up. I miss running the ball of the barbell over my top lip.

The scar tissue from my ear piercing, a loop in my upper ear, is distinct when you rub it, but there is virtually no trace of the eyebrow piercing I had in my right eyebrow.

There is a scar on the top of my middle finger, near the nail, in a crescent shape only about a quarter of an inch long. I do not recall how I got it, but I know it wasn't a severe injury. Just another cut which, like a guy, I didn't care for properly.

I do not have a scar, I repeat, I do not have a scar on the thumb of my right hand. When I was in second grade a classmate, Nathan, threw a pencil across the room and it stuck me at the base of my right thumb. A brown spot formed there. In my freshman year of high school, I developed a wart on the thumbprint of that thumb, like a tiny volcano of skin. Something black appeared in my thumb. The next day, the shadowy visitor had moved. I watched it travel up my thumb until it came out through the wart. And then the wart healed and the brown spot lost it's color. True story.

I had another pigmentation on my upper lip which started out brown but has faded to the same color as my skin. My dad has one in the same place, but his is visible and mine is not because I have a mustache and he does not. He used to have a mustache, but he shaved it when I was still a kid. It was weird, because it took us all a few days to notice. He didn't look that different without it.

I have a small series of scars on the outer edge of my right wrist where I had some strange itchy growths when i was a kid. It wasn't chicken pox, it wasn't ... I don't know; what else itches? Leprosy? I don't know what it was, but when it went away it left these scars.

Right now I'm missing a small patch of skin on the pointer finger of my right hand, right beside the nail. I hooked it in the grate siding of a shopping cart and pulled it around the wrong way. Blood rose around the edges and I immediately recognized that skin was going to have to come off, so I ripped it off while it was still numb. It doesn't hurt too bad, but it still looks like a pool of blood. This may leave a scar, but I doubt it.

I had a heart catheterization a few years ago, but I don't think it left a scar. They poke a needle into a vein in the crotch and run it up to the heart, inject some dye, take a picture. It left a huge bruise and some woman had to shave me, but there were no lasting effects. And my heart is fine.

I have a scar in the ditch of my left elbow from where I've had a needle inserted so many times. Because I have a massive heroin addiction.

In college, after performing a skit in the Black Box space, which was actually the college television studio, I tripped and banged my left shin on a piece of metal jutting up from the floor. It felt terrible, but I never had it looked at and now there's a small groove in my leg. I don't remember what the skit was about, but I was in it with my friend Sam and we overrode the director to create our own ending each night, which featured our characters falling in love with each other rather than the girl over whom we were fighting.

The tattoo on my right arm could be considered a scar. I got it on my 30th birthday. It runs from the back of my hand almost to the elbow. It is Tibetan Uchen script, all red, and I get asked about it everyday. But that's cool because it's a Buddhist mantra about seeking peace and enlightenment so it's a good thing to talk about.

The next tattoo I get, which I talked to Roxanne at Living Canvas about tonight, will be a series of elephants overlapping in a circle, their combined shapes forming the outline of a lotus. It will probably have some text to it as well, something from verse 23 of the Dhammapada, entitled "The Elephant". I'd like for the coloring to resemble that of James Jean, but I'm open to Roxanne's suggestions. It will go onto my left arm, either the forearm or the upper arm; I haven't decided yet.

There are several more tattoos I'd like to get. I'd like Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Oath on each of my calves. I'd like a Tardis and a cat skull with some embellishments, like flowers and a scroll, to honor my cat, Washington. (Shutup, that's totally manly.) There's a woman I'd like tattooed on my upper left arm, a sketch an artist did for me when I went to the Small Press Expo in Washington D.C. in 2009. I'd like the Matrix of Leadership from Transformers: The Movie (1986) tattooed on my chest. And, just in general, I'd like to have waves on my arms in the style of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by the Japanese artist Hokusai. I've also considered getting a traditional "Mom" tattoo, just for the conflicting feelings it would stir up in my mother.

I have a scar on my top right thigh from where I was cutting into a box of cardboard, reshaping it to create a smaller box, and the box knife slipped and sliced into me. If I hadn't been wearing pants, I'd have needed stitches.

There is a pronounced bump on the top of my head, toward the back, which I can nick when shaving if I am not careful. I also tend to scrape the back of my head and, when shaving my face, there is a small mole on my left cheek which sometimes gets cut.

I do not have scars from any major surgeries or serious cuts, having never had major surgery or a serious cut. I've been in car accidents, but never been hurt. No falls, maulings or mall fallings. I'm not actually addicted to heroin. And my cats know how to abuse me without leaving marks.

I guess I'm lucky.