I have a pretty large scar on my left forearm, an oval about an inch and a half wide and about seven inches long. I caught it in a wringer when I was 8.
I could probably find a cosmetic surgeon that could correct it, but it’s been part of me for so long that it doesn’t feel right to lose it.
I was always proud of my scar. Some of the kids were scared or grossed out by it, especially when I first got it (when it was fresh, it was an enormous scab that dominated my arm), but nobody has ever teased me about it.
Every spring, when I start wearing short sleeves again, a few of my students will ask me about it. Of course, most have them have never seen a wringer, or even heard of one, so it’s a little hard to explain.
When I was fairly young (don’t remember my age then exactly) I was playing with a babysitter, and I tripped and fell on the corner of a table. Ow. It made a good cut near my eye. One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was trundling towards the local walk-in clinic.
I have a scar in my cheek, from falling off of a chair when I was two or so. There was a nail sticking out, and I cut my cheek quite deeply on it. I was taken to the hospital and got stitches. You couldn’t tell it was there by the time I started going to school, so I never really got teased about it.
I have a scar just a hair’s breadth from my left eye that I got while playing Duck Duck Goose (yes, Duck Duck Goose) in kindergarten. It was pretty noticeable, and I got picked on a little for it (though mostly I was picked on for being a shy geek). Then I got glasses in 5th grade, so you couldn’t really see the scar anymore.
But at about the same time, I went through some major growth spurts, so that I got stretch marks all over the place. The most prominent ones were on my knees and across my lower back. They all looked like scars from some horrible accident, so I got called on all those for a long time. The ones on my back are still there, so I don’t particularly enjoy going to the beach or pool in public. I’m still self-conscious about them.
Sometime during high school, I was bitten on the face by a large dog (vicious half-brother to our sweet cream-puff, Ziya). If it weren’t for my glasses, I could’ve lost my eye. I never saw the damage until after it was all stitched up, but I’m told that half my face was basically hanging off. By this time, kids at school were nicer, so I wasn’t teased about it as much as asked constantly. Some time later came time for senior portraits. When they showed me the proofs for me to OK them, I saw that they got rid of the scar in touch-up. I gave them the proofs back and told them to leave the scar this time. It’s part of me, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not there. It’s a lot less noticeable now, so not many people ask me about it anymore…
I ripped my lower lip off when I was very young. I was in a walker (remember those? giving mobility to babies who couldn’t even stand on their own yet) and I flew down a staircase or something and hit the corner of a brick wall, and ripped off my lower lip. It was hanging by a thin tendril of skin, and I was sucking on it. Had that tendril broken, I would have swallowed my lower lip.
They brought me to the E.R. They couldn’t use a local anaesthetic on my lip, because that would have puffed it up, making it very difficult to re-attach properly. (This was in 1973, so they might have better locals now.) I guess I was too young for a general anaesthetic (again, I’m sure anaesthesiology has progressed since then), and perhaps they injected me with something, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is being strapped down to an operating table and screaming. Come to think of it, they probably did inject me with something eventually, or they wouldn’t have been able to do any work, since I was screaming.
They called in a pediatric plastic surgeon who reconstructed my lower lip. It looks normal, but it’s a bit thin. I would have liked to have had fuller lips. (Maybe collagen one day when I can afford it.) The scars (there are several) are still quite visible. But at least I have a lower lip. If I had swallowed it, who knows how I would have turned out.
When I was in fourth grade my dog bit my face. Luckily he didn’t get me that bad, and the plastic surgeon did a good job sewing up the lip. The scar on my lip is not really noticeable, just a small line and it was close to the lower corner of my mouth. The shape and color of my lip weren’t affected at all. I was teased about the scar when I first had the stitches. People would ask me how I got it and then suggest that I got my lip caught in this girl’s braces, but there wasn’t anything major. (I eventually moved away, but came back to the city for college. I had a class with the girl that people would tease me about and she is absolutely beautiful so I only wish that it was true.)
In high school I was in a serious car accident. All of the glass in the car was broken, which meant a lot of little pieces of glass flying around hitting me in the face. Several tiny to medium sized scars are on the left side of my face now. I also got one on my right jawline, but it isn’t noticeable because of its placement. I’m almost certain that the scars have faded, but it’s hard to tell by how much. Since I’m not a child anymore I don’t have to worry about being teased about them. So it’s not like I’ve really grown up with the most recent ones. The problem I have now is I don’t know how noticeable they are. It’s hard to get an answer out of anyone that I feel isn’t being sugar-coated. So now I don’t know if I notice them more because I pay more attention to my faults than other people, or if I don’t notice them because I see my own face so often that I just don’t pay as close attention.
I’ve been considering getting them removed. Though I’m worried that it might not work and/or will come out worse than before.
I have a two and a half inch scar under my left eye that I got when i was fifteen months old. You can still even make out the stitch holes.
I did get a lot of grief from the kids on the playground but it wasn’t too bad. Now, I wouldn’t have it removed for the world. Its broken the ice for a ton of conversations I’ve had with folks and after a while they stop noticing it altogether.
Sometimes I’ll make up fascinating stories to tell people who sit next to me on a plane about it. Sometimes when I meet new people its fun to watch how long they’ll furtively glance at it before asking me.
I gess what I’m trying to say is I think its fun having a scar and I think it makes me look distinctive.
When I was about ten, another boy and I were hacking on a wooden box with butcher knives. He swung too far and sliced open my chest. Fifteen stitches later, I had a nice curving scar under my left breast.
I thought it was sorta cool after the bandages came off and the stitches came out. That was until Jr. High School, where cruelty is a way of life. In the locker room, I was asked if I had been born with a girl’s breast and had to have it removed. This led to a general piling on that basically scarred my self image until I left school at 18. I’ve held a grudge all these years and only wished doom and death for those involved. Childish, no?
I have a scar on my forehead, and I had it before young Mr. Potter - although mine’s not a lightning bolt, darn the luck.
When I was young, we lived in a fairly rural/wooded area. In the rear of our property, there was a lot of junk. For some reason, I was playing back there (I was perhaps 7 or so, maybe younger). I tripped and split my head open on an old ceramic toilet.
I remember vividly being placed on a stretcher in the emergency room and a paper towel being placed over my head. They didn’t use a local; they stitched me up right there like that. (I suspect it wasn’t a sufficiently deep cut.)
The scar remains to this day. For a long time, it was very tough to see, but now that my hairline is receding ever so rapidly, it’s more visible.
I don’t even notice it being there, though. About ten years ago, someone asked me about it - it might have been the first time anyone ever had, to my memory. I had to do a double take and ask, “What scar?”
I don’t really see it when I look in a mirror, but I usually avoid those anyway.
I have a vertical scar on my upper lip very similar to your’s thanks to a Siamese that I was holding that very determinedly decided to scale my face against my objections when I was 17. Poor kitty.
i have scars all over my body, i cut, people stare at me a lot like “what the fuck is wrong with her legs?”/“yuck what a monster, who could hurt themselves like that!” I have a birthmark on my leg that everyone asks what it is…is it just me or have some people never seen a fricken birth mark before? whatever life goes on
A scar on the back of my head from some stanley knife wielding scouser in the mid eighties…
Ah, but they’ve got a sense of humour those Liverpudlians… Salt of the Earth… ‘Cockneys Die’. (Lime Street anyone?)
I am quite the graceful one… starting when I was about 4 and running through the end of high I get a new set of stitches pretty much every year… sometimes twice… I have 5 sets in my forehead alone. Three of those forehead scars I got when I was five or six (falling down various flights of stairs and whatnot…) and they were really noticable when I was in grade school. Kids called me “Frankenstein” and “Scarface” but it didn’t really bother me…
my best set of stitches was a chainsaw to the face when I was a sophomore in high school 78 stitches close a cut in my upper lip to put my bottom lip back together. The doctor did a really good job. you can see it if you look and I can feel the scar tissue inside my lips, but it is not nearly as bad as one would expect.
I guess it because of me being a guy, but I kinda dig my scars.
I was hit right over my eye with a golf club at 8 years of age, shortly after moving out here. It was only six stitches, after which I went back to my friend’s house. I was rather lucky, I know.
However, it happened right in my eyebrow. To this day, no hair grows in a certain spot there, and I had a bit of a time discouraging rumors when I was 13 that I shaved my eyebrow as a fashion statement or otherwise. It wasn’t really noticed in my elementary school, which was unusually sheltered and harboring of a tolerant attitude towards others.
