Dec. 31: Non-emotional scars

I was two years old and walking on the high cement wall around the Jacksonville museum when I slipped off it and got a teeny-tiny owie. Mom says I screamed and cried forever, and "bled like a stuck pig." I have one memory of it, and that is of the doctor putting two little bandages in an x-shape on the side of my face. For all the drama, that was all he had to do to protect my gaping wound? What a quack. But for all that drama, I do have a lasting token: a scar near my left eye that looks like a dimple when I smile. Also, when we drove past the museum last year I was surprised to see that the "wall" at its highest was only a few inches above the sidewalk. Hm.

A few years after that, I was riding my bike around our cul-de-sac. Mom had told me, as always, to stay on the sidewalk. At the very end of the cul-de-sac I rode out of one driveway into the street and immediately turned into another one to get back to the sidewalk. That was my intention, anyway. In the adrenaline surge of my first taste of street racing, I fell off my bike. Blood began to run from my knee down my light blue sock. I don't remember if I ran or rode home and I don't remember if I ever admitted what really happened, but besides ruining my sock, there was a gruesome scar afterward that always reminded me of the one time (ha!) I disobeyed my mother.

Fast forward 20 years to a sunny afternoon outside my apartment building in Johns Landing. I had just picked up my mail and was reading it as I walked through the parking lot. I stepped in a pothole and fell, breaking a metatarsal in my right foot and impaling my left knee on a large rock. This was my first broken bone. Memorable, yes, but oh-so-painful. The good news? The hole in my knee was exactly where the scar was from falling off my bike in the street. Now there's no proof I ever rebelled against Mom. (I've broken my feet eleventy times since then. I'm more than just a klutz, though. I think I'm also a little bit tender-boned. I don't know if that's actually possible, to be tender-boned, but I'm gonna say it is. Most of the time my feet have broken it's because I run into a chair leg or door frame, stuff that everybody does occasionally. But I always seem to break a bone when I do it. I'm special.)

On February 9, 2000 I got another scar, but I was given a gorgeous baby girl in exchange. Someone slashed me in the same place 21 months later, and I got a goofy looking baby boy that time. As proud I am of the reasons I have these scars, unlike Britney Spears, I'm not real eager to show them off every time I step out of a car. Besides, I'd have to move my droopy belly out of the way first, and I just don't have that kind of energy.

I read recently, "your scars indicate what type of life you've lived." My scars say I'm clumsier than hell, but they also say that I'm a mom. Not a bad thing at all.

--Jen