I think he wins the thread.
Lessee - one on my knee that I got 60 years ago playing dodge in an asphalt parking lot. A double scar on my belly from two female surgeries, the last being a hysterectomy. Some tiny ones from laparoscopic gall bladder removal. Two on my left arm where my Dalmatian scratched me. And the newest on my left shin where I got 10 stitches after falling against a metal tread last year.
There are probably some others I’ve forgotten. Grace isn’t one of my talents.
I have a scar the length of my index finger from a dog bite when I was probably 12 or so. Roughhousing with the family dog and I guess I kneeled on his paw or something. He snapped at me and I snatched hand back, so his tooth left a gash all the way up. Totally my fault.
A small surgery scar on my elbow from an “epicondyle fasciotomy”. Basically they scraped the scar tissue off my lateral epicondyle to solve chronic tennis elbow.
A tiny scar inside the first (palm side) knuckle on my middle finger from when I tried to catch a soap dispenser that I had knocked off the counter, and grabbed exactly when it shattered against the toilet tank. 4 stitches for that one.
The most prominent one is in my wrist, from a glass container that shattered as I was putting away the cheese knives that we stored in it. A shower of broken glass (and cheese knives) came pouring out of the cupboard at my face, so I put my hands up to protect myself. Lots of little cuts, and one big gash across my wrist. Somehow missed both arteries, and was just deep enough to expose the tendons, but not injure them. 9 stitches. That scar requires some explanation when people see it.
All of these are on my left hand and arm. Apparently my right side is immune from injury.
I have a few nicks and scratches that left small, unremarkable scars. I also have one on my center chest from a melanoma excision - that one does not get seen much and when I go swimming with non-family members I generally cover it up with a water shirt. My two hernia scars from when I was a kid literally never get seen, so I take no measures to hide them.
I have very few.
But mostly from making mistakes.
Do not try to use sharp instruments or get close to sharp objects when under the influence of any chemical substance, including alcohol of course.
As a newborn, I had to have a birth defect fixed surgically.
And the fun continued: a few years later, I put my hand through the storm door window, reminding my Dad to install the guard panel;
And the fun continued: a couple years after that, the right hand area of my forehead met the concrete walkway at hypersonic speed. Lotsa needles to drain out fluid. I eventually woke up;
And the fun continued: somewhere in there, one of the little bastards that lived behind us decided to apply a rusty pipe to the side of my head, shredding the top of my ear. Stitches ensued and you can see the scars. While I was getting my ear reassembled with accompanying tetanus shot, my sister (we called her Sis) beat the absolute shit out of the little turd responsible.
Childhood was a blast — wait, that came later when I discovered flash powder!
Only two that are at all visible. Everything else was minor cuts and scrapes. Yeah, I’ve been very lucky in that regard.
The oldest one was a slash across the chest with a carving knife when I was about nine years old. Took 15 stitches. Since that was nearly 70 years ago, it’s not really visible anymore. The other one is from knee replacement about two years ago. It’s also quite faded now, compared to when it was fresh, but there is a ridge of scar tissue there. Considering all the stupid shit I did, the fact that I survived a 9.2 earthquake, spent a year in Vietnam, and that I spent many years in construction, I feel pretty fortunate.
Some minor mental scars, but this thread isn’t about that.
I have a scar that runs down my cheek, from just under my outer eye towards my chin at an angle.
I used to tell my kids it was a dueling scar from Munich.
I don’t know where I got it, probably from a fence climbing accident when I was a very small boy. I don’t actually ever remember not having it.
My father used to joke that the scar on my nose was “a dueling scar from Heidelberg.” GMTA.
Most prominent are the two on my forehead, just below where my hairline used to be.
The one on the left happened when I was six and walked behind the wood-seat swing on which my sister was swinging. She nailed me quite well, and my parents debated whether or not stitches were necessary. They opted against the procedure, and I’ve reflected the the result of that decision ever since.
The one on the right isn’t so much a scar as it is a divot; the result of the removal of a sebaceous cyst several years ago. My doctor assured me that it would heal over and not be noticeable. He lied.
Ha, I have a gash on my chin caused by a board with a nail falling across it when I was about 10. And same as the others above-- “that’s a Heidelberg Dueling scar.”
I have an 8" scar that runs up the inside of my left forearm. There are very visible indications of 24 sutures. The scar is from surgery to repair flexor tendons that were cut in an accident, but it looks exactly like I tried to “end things.” I was very self-conscious of the scar for many years, deliberately wearing long sleeves to conceal it. (It was especially noticeable when I reached out to receive change or take something with my left hand.) It doesn’t bother me quite as much now, but I’m still aware of people seeing it and likely thinking, “That looks just like this guy…”
I had an accident when I was 19 which resulted in my forehead being split open from above the hairline to the bridge of my nose. It took 60 stitches to repair. It bothered me a lot at the time but that was balanced by relief at my face being whole again. At one point I saw my own skull in living color.
The scar has faded quite a bit, though I can still see it in the mirror. I rarely think about it these days. Some people notice it and some don’t, depending on the light I guess. Just makes me interesting. Sorta.
When I was 17 or so, I dove into a pool and swam a few feet across the bottom with my nose. That left a very bad scab for quite awhile and I was absolutely miserable about it at the time since it covered my entire nose, but luckily there was no lasting scar.
I have a very pale surgical scar on my stomach from having a mole removed as a child. The whole experience was so anxiety-inducing - from the wait time for results, to so many adults seeing fit to tell a child their dermatological horror stories, to no one actually explaining the results to me (the doctor said something about it being “active”???) - that I haven’t been to a dermatologist since. ![]()
I have assorted scars on my hands, the most notable being a raised patch on my left thumb from the last time I was allowed to cut up a butternut squash.
I fell off my bike quite a bit as a small child, so my knees were always skinned up to some degree. I have a few patches on my knees that are a bit pigmented, but they’re not what I would think of as regular scars.
Let’s see… I have a scar across my throat from one of my cats really not wanting to go to the vet. It kind of blends in with the normal lines in my neck though so it’s not super noticeable.
Next there’s the pea-sized chicken pox scar on my chest. It was the first blister to come up and the last to heal. You can see it if I wear a shirt with a lower neckline.
I have an odd looking mark across the back of my right hand from a second-degree burn. I bumped my hand against the inside of the oven door.
Several scars on my knee from tripping and falling on a gravel parking lot. I had bits of gravel imbedded in my skin that worked their way out over the next few months.
Another scar on the other knee from ripping it open on an exposed nail on the nasty old couch I kept nagging my ex to throw out…
Finally I have hysterectomy scars. I have an extra one from the normal scars because the surgeon had some problems getting it out and she went in at another angle.
None of them really bother me, I do get asked about the chicken pox scar sometimes just because it’s kind of odd looking.
Another scar is on my knee. I fell down and got quite the cut when I was six. My mother tried to keep the skin together with a butterfly bandage but it was on the side of the knee and pulled apart.
A very impressive scar for a nothing.
I got a bunch.
My eyebrows don’t match, I have scars in both of them from various childhood accidents…chasing the dog around the coffee table after he took the head off of my plastic golf club. I’ve got a lovely burn scar on my left arm from where I spilled some petroleum wax on it, the black stuff in bio-class dissecting trays. Pro tip, don’t come out of the lab back room with black all over your arm and say “I burned myself.” Tends to freak people out.
The annoying one on my knee from the ACL repair, if I bump the head of the screw on something it really smarts. The spot on my wrist where my brother stabbed me with a torn open soda can (we were about 8 and 10)
But the one that gets the most attention is where I tore my achilles and they took the stitches out too soon, had to do a skin graft, so I’ve got a doozy on my left ankle. The docs took a flap from the side of my foot and sewed it onto the back to cover the achilles, then took some skin from the back of my thigh to fill in the gap. I must say, that the pain where they took the skin graft from is the worst I’ve ever had. And now my ankle is…not pretty.
And I’m fine with all of them, they happened, nothing to be done about it now.
I was an active child and loved the outdoors so as a kid and teen I gathered quite a collection of little scars from various falls and scrapes. Most have faded in the succeeding decades but a few remain. Some favorites:
I have a scar on the tip of my right index finger, about an inch long, centered on the tip and running down my finger. When I was ~10 or so I was building one of those little electrical circuit experiment kits and for some reason thought I needed to enlarge a hole on the cardboard cover. Using a Swiss Army Knife I started drilling through it and sure as shit the knife suddenly closed on my finger, slicing the pad down to the bone.
I have a long scar on the front of my ankle. When I was a kid I was crawling through a culvert (a big culvert, maybe 5’ in diameter) and my ankle hit a rather large protuding bolt that held one of the longitudinal sections together.
I have a jagged scar across my right eyebrow. When I was a kid (so I’m told, I was too young to remember this) I was chasing a kitten around the house and slammed my face against the underside of the dining room table.
A hourglass shaped scar on the back my hand came from throwing a typewriter into a dumpster. Something on the machine somehow caught a bit of skin on the back of my hand and ripped it off.
Most recently I made the mistake of picking up an injured cat. In my defense I didn’t realize it was injured. The cat flipped out and bit me on my right thumb hard, leaving two nearly parallel lines of puncture wounds. They healed fine but left resulting scars.
I’m totally fine with all of them.
Hehe, one of mine is on my right index finger. I was flipping a chisel around in my hand in shop class when I was about 15, and didn’t get it around far enough to grab the handle one time. My teacher saw me do it, and made me clean up the blood before I could go to the nurse and get a band-aid.