having quite a bit of semitic blood coursing through my veins, i tend to scar easily. i have scars dating back almost as far as my feeble memory. and i have scars that actually fuel my memory and my conscience, like unintentional tatoos. i have all range of scars, from red to pink to white to shiny to dull to raised to flat.
while my scars always tend to impress the ages 6-10 male audience, i think that most people are put-off by them. i get those looks. you know, the looks that will wander from your eyes during a conversation and then dart to a scar, languishing there just a bit too long, then jolting back up to meet your eyes again, innocently, as if to say: "no, it's okay, i think you're a perfectly normal human being. . . now i gotta go do something else."
one of my most noticeable scars (for the general public) is just over eleven years old. it is also the most man-made looking scar i have, as it is the result of surgery. i earned it when i was nineteen, just before my second year of college.
it began on one of those warm august nights in the st. louis suburbs, charged with the energy and sadness of momentarily-reunited high-school friends, now more strangers than anything else, fending-off boredom and the recognition that many of us didn't know who we were anymore, let alone who anyone else was. (ah, to be nineteen again!)
due to college expense situations, my old tank of a car had just been sold, and i was borrowing my younger sister's convertible for the remaining few weeks of the summer. many of the old gang had met at MMcMs house. not knowing what to do with ourselves, we decided to caravan to the regional favorite personal-fast-fat-storage-retailers to indulge in some frozen custard.
in my sister's car were myself, one of my best friends J, and another good friend D. (the convertible had a back seat, although not much of one.) one thing led to another, and several minutes later we were all three trapped under a smoking, upside-down convertible. correction: by the time i knew what was happening, only i was trapped, my left hand pinned between the earth and the car.
i did the only reasonable thing that i could do -- i pulled that sucker out fast, consequences be damned, and ran.
i remember long hours in excrutiating pain sitting in the ER, staring at the jumbled equipment bolted to the solid walls, and fearing the lack of privacy left by the retractable curtain walls. but what i most remember is the fear of my father mixed together with the excrutiating pain in my left hand.
more than the thoughts of having a crippled hand the rest of my life, i feared that my father would be mad, that he would be apoplectic, that his head would inflate to twice its normal size and burst, that he would be disappointed.
my fears were founded. upon returning to the house at approximately 3:00 the next morning, my father loudly proclaimed that i had ruined the family, left the house, and didn't come back for several days. he told no one where he was going or when he would be back. he never asked how i was or how my friends were. he didn't thank my mom for sitting patiently with me for all that time while he remained at home. nothing at all but proclaiming the ruination of the family and the disappearing act. (all that, and he didn't even know i was gay yet!)
yep. every time i look at that scar on the left hand, i see that nexus of age, innocence, ego and self-loathing that embody those few days of my nineteenth year. how just a few moments can change you forever. . . how powerful a small shift in perception can be. . .
