I have a scar or 2 that actually bring back good memories. I also have a couple of surgical scars that went very well. Tell us your stories.
I have s scar from helping a friend clean up after her house was destroyed by a tornado. I also have a scar from a barbed wire fence. Lots of other scars. I think they tell stories.
I have two generally-visible scars, both of which have stories behind them:
- A horizontal scar across the bridge of my nose, the result of accidentally going through a window face-first when I was five years old; the ensuing deep cut across my nose required four stitches.
- A long scar on my right elbow, from surgery to repair a broken ulna, which I suffered when slipping and falling on ice almost exactly a year ago; there are a titanium plate, and six screws, underneath the scar. (Though, that scar has already faded quite a bit.)
I was self-conscious of the scar on my nose when I was a kid. By the time I was in my teens, I guess I had already become less conscious of it; when I was in high school, my parents asked if the scar bothered me enough that I might want plastic surgery on it, which I refused.
(I also have two faint scars on my lower abdomen, the result of surgery when I was two years old, to repair a congenital hernia. But, those aren’t visible to anyone but my doctors and my wife. 
)
Thanks for sharing, kenobi. I also have a scar on the bridge of my nose. It is not very visible though. It came from breaking glasses across my bridge.
Mine looks not unlike the dent that one can get on the bridge of the nose from wearing glasses, though it’s a smidge lower than where glasses would sit.
I was young and not very used to glasses. I broke many pairs.
When I was about 10, I was playing in a creek. The lady who owned the property came out with a shotgun. We ran…I put my foot on the middle strand of the barbed wire. It broke and the upper strand cut me but good. Still have that scar on my thigh 55 years later.
Hehehe, I’m largely covered with scars. I’ve got several on my forehead, one on my upper lip, another on my chin, tons on my hands, feet, legs and arms. Some are fading away as I get older, and even some that would never seem to tan are starting to actually work like normal skin again. Others continue to be stark white against a tan.
How do I feel about them? I dunno, they’re largely a testament to how clumsy and/or indifferent to my own well being I can be. I probably serve as a cautionary tale for folks who want to be pretty.
One that is a divot on my shin still persists (but hey, it is getting more shallow). I was required to carry a Blackberry when I was on call at the time, and I was mowing the yard. I ran over something, and got blasted in the shin. I saw the debris of a circuit board on the ground and wondered “what idiot left a piece of electronics in my yard for me to run over?” I felt my hip and realized “Oh, that idiot.” The thing that blasted me in the shin was the battery, and with the parts partially assembled you could see the path of the mower blade as it passed through the blackberry, then caught the battery and shoved it out at me.
About 37 years ago I got a scar on my right chin in a motorcycle accident.
About TWO months ago that scar started itching and peeling.
It’s never done that until now.
It’s truly bizarre.
I have three scars, two from road rash when I fell down while running a race, and one from a burn when my leg’s skin stuck to the hot steel rim of a rice cooker.
I have one on my hand from when I tried using a knife to separate two frozen burgers. My appendix scar looks pretty bad; the surgeon was ancient and didn’t do laparoscopic surgeries.
I have a few. The only interesting one is that I’ve got one across my wrist which looks like I slit it. The real story is much more boring.
I have the one from being stabbed in the chest and the two that come from the surgery/ treatment for the collapsed lung that ensued. I also have a large appendix scar.
The scars from the stabbing are way more interesting to others, but the appendix scar has deeper, just as painful memories for me.
As with most people, I have loads of scars. My favourites:
Left lower arm: a set of three matching curves, but decreasing in length. Obtained by helping carry pig shed over an electric fence. My grip slipped and the corregated iron roof cut me.
Right arm: near my elbow. A lesson in kitchen safety. I was boiling oil to make koeksisters (a doughnut-like sweet treat) when I was about 13 years old. The oil caught fire and instead of putting a lid on it, I moved it outdoors. A splash of boiling oil escaped and hit me. I managed keep holding the pot, got it outside then went to find my mother.
My magnum opus: I had an appendectomy at age 11. The “dissolving stitches” did not fully dissolve, so several month later my mother removed them with tweezers. But: too late - the stitch was in the scar long enough to leave a permanent piercing.
Even now, at 38 years later… I have a pieced appendix scar. I can put earings in it. Almost no one wants to see, but hell, I am proud!
Oh… bonus ones: left hand, 5cm cut on the base of my thumb. 13 year old, misusing a chisel in a carpentry lesson. I could not tell my teacher, he would have blown his top! He was seriously big on workshop safety. Just excused myself to go to the bathroom, used toilet paper to stem the bleeding.
Left hand, ring finger. Got hit by a sharp fencing sword (a foil, but the protective rubber knob that usually sits on the end had come off). I continued after my opponent swapped weapons, and I won the fight.
Both of my scars have become invisible with age.
The first was near to my eye; an older boy hitting me with a stick when I was about 4. It’s been visible most of my life but now is basically continuous with the eye socket line around the eye.
The other is along my chin when I fell, also quite young. The beard covers that up (as well as the double chin ) Now that I think about it, there’s another scar under my lower lip, also in beardtown.
I have a two-inch scar across my neck from my thyroidectomy. It has faded a lot now since the surgery was ten years ago but for the first few months after I was very into wearing scarves.
IMO scars are the battle damage from the battles you survived. So in some sense a source of pride although most of the ones I accumulated in my youth are rueful reminders of bad ideas badly executed.
My current GF has more and more severe scars than most women her age and is real self-conscious about them. They don’t bother me and I’m working on building up her self-esteem about that.
I’ve got a few - none terribly prominent or dramatic. On my hands, legs and feet, on my head under my hair. All from stupidity or carelessness when younger. I never really cared about them one way or another. But now that I’m developing arthritis related to my various bone fractures, the scars sorta remind me of how careless I was with my body, and how maybe that wasn’t a great way to be.
I’ve got a bunch, but the most prominent ones came from getting wrapped around my bicycle by a semi. One runs the length of my forearm where they installed and later removed a plate on my radius. The other runs from the bridge of my nose, just past the tear duct, and then down across my cheek. People either can’t see the one on my face or are shocked by it; something about how it shadows. I used to be more self-conscious about that one, but it’s become less prominent and the nerve damage has improved.
I have a scar from a motorcycle accident when I was 11 years old. 130 stitches. It’s my forhead and down in front of my ear (rear fender scalped me).
But I don’t care about it. really the only time it’s noticeable is it tans a bit differently, and when I frown because I suppose nerve/muscle damage.
How do I feel about it? I don’t care.
Heh. Maybe I did back when it happened though. I had a buddy tell me “Girls don’t like you as much now”. I was thrilled. Girls know I exist?!?!? Wow!
I thought my scars were interesting until I met a fellow in college who had been swallowed up to mid-thigh by a Great White shark. Several arched rows of punctures and a long rip down one side where a tooth got caught. Apparently the beast had approached from below while he was treading water and lifted him above the surface.
He never knew what hit him, but a friend paddling next to him never recovered from the trauma of watching what happened.