Scars

I thought I’d write about the scars that my body has accumulated over the years, from various accidents and other incidents.

There’s one on my forehead, which I’m told derives from a temper tantrum when I was two. Apparently I hit it on the corner of a brick wall.

When I was a preschooler I fell off a bunk bed and needed stitches in my head, and you’d probably find a scar there if you shaved my head. I remember tiny fragments of this event, but not most of it. I remember feeling dazed, and more specifically, responding in a dazed way when asked which of two adults should trim the hair back.

I’ve been bitten by dogs, twice. The first dog to bite me belonged to friends; it was a border collie and bit me on the upper leg. The friends in question were building on their property at the time and the noise of machinery probably affected the dog. There certainly used to be some scars but they’ve since faded.

What’s far more interesting than the actual dog bite, however, is the story of what happened when I told Santa. It wasn’t long afterwards that I went with Grandma to see Santa Claus at Adelaide’s magic cave, and naturally the conversation with Santa turned to the matter of my having been recently bitten by a dog. But Santa got so distracted by that topic that when he was saying goodbye, I had to interrupt and say, “You forgot to ask me what I wanted for Christmas“! I think Santa must be getting old.

The other dog bite was actually from our own dog at the time - Comet, a Blue Heeler. That was on my face, but I’ve never been aware of there being a scar. It happened after we got home from somewhere one evening; I don’t know why, but I wasn’t the first person that Comet bit. Blue Heelers are not good family dogs; they tend to be extremely protective of a single person, and in Comet’s case that was my sister.

My most visible scar is on the ring finger of my left hand, and here’s how it came about. I once gave Rebecca a very powerful water pistol as a Christmas present (one of the worst mistakes in my life, as I’ve been known to jest). One day - many years later - I hid the water pistol in my bedroom for fun’s sake. As soon as I told her that it was hidden, she rushed into my bedroom to hunt for it, and when I tried to get in to watch, she blocked up the door. I went around to the other door which had glass windows in it, and as I started to push, she started to lock them. I kept pushing on the door, or to be more precise, the glass windows, until they gave way. Inevitably, one fragment of glass went right into my finger. . .