January 29, 2010 : Scars

Hello!

January 29th, already? Mein gott! Got to make this day count!

I am laughing now as I type because I just looked down at my right hand...which is not in itself funny. I look down and see my right hand, which has a scar... also not funny. I look down and see my right hand, my scar, and remember that it is my newest scar, only a few months old, sustained as I did my underwater scuba training last fall in the south of France. Not particularly funny, either, eh? I agree.

What IS funny, is that when I look down at my right hand, and see that scar that tells that story, I feel a rush of pride. I'm not kidding. This scar was borne of completely screwing up (I can promise you, I won't be touching everything when I scuba in the future, not without extreme caution or gloves. And the BLOOD! It didn't start until I had hauled my butt out of the water into the boat, and then when I hit the air, I was looking like of of those Knights who say Nee after their arms get chopped off!), and I realize that some perverse part of myself that maybe never grew up (okay, most of me never grew up) is actually proud of it! A badge of honor, or some such. I am really laughing now, because even as I write, I am still proud of it. Incredible...I thought bringing that into the light would disperse that feeling, but nope.

I think then of the many other scars on this battle-torn body: the scar above my left eyebrow from a metal swing that I ran into (while someone was swinging... lots of blood that day, too - I am a bleeder! I remember my sister was meant to be watching me and so she got into trouble. I remember Mr. O'Toole who took me to the hospital - I think he took us all to the hospital, he was like our neighborhood ambulance, the man who actually had a car. Nice man, RIP. I think about eating ice cream and people saying how I almost lost my eye. I liked that. I liked that a lot. Lots of drama, without the eye loss. Excellent.)

Then I think of the incredible symmetrical scar on my right outer thigh, a badge from walking the fence inside our apartment complex. Or rather from not walking the fence, from trying to walk the fence. I fell. Walking the fence was a particularly interesting exploit designed by older kids, a rite of passage most were smart enough to pass over... The rickety and rusted, sometimes green painted metal fence had a flat part about two feet off the ground that one was to walk on. The walking-on part was about an inch wide, maybe an inch and a half. Normally emminently doable, but on one side of the walking-on part, there were spikes. Metal spikes, not particularly sharp, but spokes nonetheless, which effectively impeded any effort to balance on that inch-and-a-half. And wasn't that the fun of it? So I fell. And my heart's desire carried me the 93 steps up to my apartment, bleeding all of the place again. (I was of course delighted if in pain... I would like to see someone carry me like that now! ;-) Arriving at the apartment, my mother ushered me into the bathroom where she sat me on the sink and pour hydrogen peroxide on my cut to clean it. YOWZER! It got cleaned, and the scar still walks with me.

And then the scar-not-scar of my tattoo. Which I got as part of a longstanding tradition of midlife crisis, apparently, but which I still love. A dolphin jumping over the moon. Never you mind where! I am laughing again, because my behavior in the tattoo parlor, well, it could have been better. And no, I was not drunk. It's just that it hurt. It hurt like a moth- well, you know. And so after the kindly man named Cap'n something - with an eye patch no less - after he started the work, I was wriggling. I knew I couldn't stop him, or I would just have a strange line on my - oh no you don't! - so I stayed, but I really annoyed the man. And my dolphin has a shadow. That's how he fixed my screwup. But I still smile when I think of my dolphin...I can't really see it unless I have a mirror...

Anyway, that was fun. It is fun to look back, to think of the scars and the good times as well. After long enough it really is all good. I look back at the dramas in my life and now I can laugh because I see them differently, like a movie I can enjoy. And it helps, too, when drama arises anew in my life. (And it always does, doesn't it?) It helps because I know that this, too, shall pass.

I've got the scars to prove it.