Opal, I recently read a story about cosmetic tattooing. One of their examples was tattooing on a pinkish color to make a “lip” where a woman lost one to a dog bite. Incidentally, they also tattoo nipples on reconstructed breasts after mastectomy.
My cat scratched me on the face when I was in middle school. It was deep and I’ve always been a slow healer, so you could see the mark for a year. I had some kids at school call me “G.I. Joe” until it healed.
Facial scars from broken nose and minor surgery to correct it, times four.
Now, the bridge of my glasses hides it, but it’s just a line at the bridge of my nose.
First time, age 9…my sister hit me in the face with a baseball bat.
Second time, age 11…my sister hit me in the face with a baseball bat.
Third time, age 16…my sister hit the back of my head with a fencepost, and I went face forward into a pile of pickets for the fence we were helping build.
Fourth time, age 19…face slammed into a steering wheel while driving somebody else’s mothers new white Caddilac with white interior, and, yeah, I bled all over the white leather.
My sister never did learn to drop a bat instead of slinging it. And even after I talked the parents into a catchers mask, she found a way to break my nose one more time.
i did get teased about it, but with all the other reasons to tease me, that one was no big deal. The black eyes and swelling and bruising were also big attention-getters for the nasty rat-bastards we grew up with, and one kid was caught by a teacher holding me down and trying to ‘wiggle’ my nose. (Age 9) When he tried it again 2 years later, I kicked him in the nuts. 30 years later, he apologized.
Joe K, when my younger brother was small he ended up standing right behind me as I swung a golf club, and it caught him in the left (IIRC) temple. LOTS of blood as I remember, and only 5 stitches, but it left a bit of a scar. To my knowledge, nobody ever made fun of him about it.
The only scar I have I got in high school. I was screwing around in gym class playing whiffle ball (inside, on a basketball court). An unfortunate series of events cause me to fall SQUARELY on my chin–I didn’t have time to put my hands down or anything. It split my chin right open–I didn’t even notice until I saw blood drops on the floor and went to look in the mirror.
I got a scar when I was really young - just over 1 yr. I had just started to walk, and my mother was in the shoe store with me. While she looked the other way, I took a few steps away from her, and fell against the shelf. Remember what shoe store shelves used to be like? A long angled shelf with a lip at the bottom to keep shoes from sliding off? Well, I hit my head on that lip.
I didn’t have stitches, but it was a pretty bad cut, I think they just put a butterfly bandage on it. I have an inch long crater in my forehead. Luckily, it’s the same colour as the rest of my skin, and is barely noticeable, except in certain lighting.
Kids at school, though they can be mean, never picked on my scar. As someone else said, there were enough other things to make fun of. Since I got it so early, it was just part of me, so I don’t think most of them noticed.
However, as an adult, I’ve had boyfriends ask about it as we’re getting to know each other. I’ve had one kid ask me what happened to my forehead. Her mother was mortified, but I didn’t care, I’d rather kids ask questions than be afraid to talk.
I don’t think about it usually. I can’t always see it, I’m usually more worried about zits on my forehead than my “divot”. [hijack] Yes, zits, and I’m over 30 - how sad is that?! [/hijack]
When I was born I had a birthmark that was a large purple lump, the same size as my left hand. At the time, my grandmother wanted the doctors to remove it, but said it would grow out by itself. Which it did. I remember being really self concious about it at school, with all the kids going ‘ewwww, what’s that?’ About the time it was growing out (about aged 7) I gained a 6 inch scar down my right leg, from an operation. So I got all the ‘ewww what’s that’ all over again, particularly when getting changed fro PE or whatever.
Yeah I cut, too. Well, I did. It’s been a few years and I hope it doesn’t happen again. Mine are limited to my arms, though.
I wonder if they would do that with a local anesthetic? I ask because my lip scar is extremely sensitive. Way more than the surrounding skin.
Nipples… I remember a site many years ago… a woman had lost a nipple to a mastectomy and was going to have a new one tattooed on. She decided that she didn’t want just a boring nipple, though. Since she was having it tattooed, she decided to go for something more interesting. She asked for submissions for what her new nipple should be. There was a gallery of them on her site… some were really neat, like the yin/yang one and some other abstract designs. There were also flowers and such… and then there were the joke ones like pictures of someone’s face…
…I don’t know which one, if any, she picked… I lost track of the site.
I had the chicken pox when I was like four. My cat scratched me on my right temple, leaving a few little pox scars there. When I was in elementary school, the kids used to say stuff about my having craters in my face. Even then I thought that was stupid and didn’t pay it much mind. Now they look so small they are barely noticable.
Dog bite to the upper lip, right on the philtrum, eight years old. 1/8th of an inch deeper, and it would have been a complete puncture. 1/8th of an inch longer, and it would’ve gone straight down to the pink part of my lip. The scar wasn’t the problem - it was the three stitches that gave me a Hitler mustache. (I wore a Band-Aid on the cut, but sometimes it would come off or I would have to replace it.) I had to ask my parents who Hitler was, and was simply told that he was a very bad man who killed lots of people in a war. Very upsetting to be called HITLER when you’re EIGHT. (At least it was for me - I was a sensitive child).
Most people never notice it now - I have to point it out.
I have an ‘i’ scar on the wrist of my right hand (dog bit but i was fairly young, but had to get rabies-shots) i find it cool actually.
I have a fairly unattractive 2 inchesX 0.5 inch scar on the side of my thigh. I was eight when in a visit to Poland with the family, i wasn’t careful playing outside: i slipped on a muddy ground and there was an old stick in the ground. ripped the flesh. Didn’t hurt much but bled a lot.
My mom freaked out when she saw it lol 
But i didn’t get stiches, so it became an ugly streched out skin. It happened around 14years ago, and i still can’t feel it if touched. Maybe a tiny bit…and it is the same pigmentation as the rest of my leg so sometimes you just don’t notice it.
I never got teased because it doesn’t show unless i am wearing a bathing suit (a bit far up to show with shorts) and most people just gave me a little disgusted look if they noticed it. But i don’t care much…
I have had a large skingraft on my upper right arm since I was about a year old. As a child I was terribly self conscious about it and would never wear sleeveless shirts. I’m 37 now and still have problems wearing tank tops or anything sleeveless. I wish I could just forget about it and say to hell with it but for some reason it really bothers me. Just can’t seem to overcome it!
Welcome, Myrtle Ubanks, from one cleftie to another. (Bilateral complete.) About a half-dozen Dopers have identified themselves as cleft-affected. You’re my people!
OpalCat, excellent topic, particularly at the start of the school year. Thanks to everyone who has posted about scarring. It’s tough stuff, for sure.
The summer I was 14, I stuck my hand through a window. I had 5 wounds needing stitches, and several long scratches on my upper arm. Two of them are shaped and positioned to look sort of like a dog bite. I was (and am) proud of my scars. Most people don’t notice unless I point them out, though. I think it’s because I don’t think of them most of the time.
It was fun coming back to school, though. Months after school started, people would do double takes and say “Were those always on your arm?”
On the 17th of February this year, I was hit by a car (being driven by a friend!), and was thrown onto a wall and cracked my head open on by left eyebrow. I woke about 4-5 days later in hospital with some cool scars.
I have a big one on the left brow which makes the entire eyebrow shorter than the other one. I also have one inbetween the two eyebrows from the same accident. It’s kinda handy since it stops me from growing a monobrow.
A few months later, I went over my handlebars and scraped my face up, leaving graze scars on me cheek, and a Potter-esque lightning bolt scar on my forehead. That sucks, because I’m called Harry, and as soon as people make that connection, they continue with references because most of them know that I despise the ‘boy wizard’. I was lucky I didn’t hit my head hard that time, because I’m only just this month nearing the end on my ban to head injuries from the initial cranial injury!
I’m only just 17, so I’ve not really had to grow up with the scars, and I’m at the age where people think they look cool, and realise that they add a bit of character.
I most certainly wouldn’t want to get rid of them now, I love the one that shortens my left eyebrow, it’s just me, I guess.
OpalCat, I was feeling sorry for you while reading the post, but FWIW when I looked at the picture I thought “Gee, that’s not bad. That wouldn’t keep someone from being pretty. I wouldn’t notice that first.”
Grew up with a low abdominal scar from surgery in 1957, before they gave babies anesthetic. It’s usually out of sight and irrelevant. Got a good six inch scar on my back and side that’s very obvious without a shirt, but I was old enough by then not to mind.
Read about a guy that had an appendectomy, but a couple things went wrong and they wound up doing extra cutting. So he’s on the beach with all these scars, and somebody asks, “Hey, buddy, what happened to you?” and he says “Appendectomy”, and they ask him, “Well, did you do it yourself?”
I have a scar on the top of my left hand that’s the diameter of a cigarette. Which isn’t surprising, as I had the entire cherry of a cigarette burn into my hand when I was 5 or so. No, it wasn’t child abuse. I was at a fair, and really excited because someone had just won a prize for me, so I was running around. A smoker was holding his cigarette down by his leg, and I ran into it. It really didn’t hurt much, and my mom said that for a few seconds I just looked at my hand as the cherry burned into it.
I really didn’t get made fun of for it. Usually kids just asked what happened. It has been becoming less prominent as time goes by. When I got a bit older, I joked that I’d always been able to tell my left from my right.
So I have a souvenier of twenty-plus stitches on my forehead. My three-year-old asks “What’s that?” and in an inspired moment, I replied:
“I’m the Boy that Lived!”
My grandpa’s big, scary German Shepherd bit me on the face (the left side of my upper lip) when I was three. I remember being on the ground with the dog looming over me and I also have vague memories of screaming with a cloth over my eyes either right before or while the doctor was stitching me up, but that’s it. I can barely see the scars when I look in the mirror, and that’s only when the lights are very bright and I stretch the skin. If anyone reacted to my stitches, or later, to my scars, I don’t remember.
More recently, my 9 year old cousin was bitten very badly by the family dog at the beginning of summer vacation. It took over forty stitches to reattach his cheek to the rest of his face. He can’t go out in the sun for six months to minimize scarring. The last time I saw him, he had faint pink lines and one huge scab that hadn’t fallen off yet, but that was a few weeks ago. The dimpling is more pronounced when he smiles. I’m not sure how he’s doing in school.