That will leave a mark!

[Uncle_Tricky]

Everyone has scars. I've recently added a few to my collection.

 

I was helping a friend of mine close a restaurant. I was using a potato press to crush whole raw potatoes into french fries. You put the potatos in the press, yard down on the lever and the potato is crushed in a vice with blades in the bottom that cuts it into fries.

 

I put my hand in the wrong spot. When I pulled down the lever, I pinched the heel of my palm in the press, right below where the thumb attaches. It took out a deep chunk that has only stopped cracking and oozing now a month later. Bloody fries anyone?

-----

When I was a kid, my brother and I were out on a rocky beach at the ocean turning over rocks. Of course, the bigger the rock, the cooler the critters. So we found this huge flat rock, and working together, we were barely able to tip this thing up.

 

While my brother held the rock up, I tried to catch a couple mud eels in the crater. Of course he couldn't hold the rock, and it tipped back over, catching my hand underneath.

 

Since one of my hands was busy being crushed under a salty barnacle covered boulder, we were unable to move the huge rock. I had to sit there for 10 minutes while my brother ran to get my dad to get the rock off my hand. That left a neat half-moon scar across three fingers.

---

Others include scars from 2 knee surgeries, one elbow surgery, and two surfboard fin scars on forehead and head.

 

Anyone else have some marks?

[chris_w]

I have a nice 1 inch scar right below my index knuckle. While washing a glass, I shoved my hand in it and twisted. A piece of the glass cracked off and I got a nice bleeder. I just slapped a band-aid on it. I was in college and didn't want to pay for the stitches, so it's a nice scar.

[vegetablebelay]

I thought this thread was going to be about this guy:

 

 

Police say teen was burned in 'Jackass' stunt

Boy could face charges

 

11/10/2002

 

By ROBERTA ROMERO / KING 5 News

 

ISSAQUAH, Wash. – A report that a teenager was set on fire by two men turned out to be a hoax. Issaquah Police say 15-year-old Kelvin Wu deliberately set his shirt on fire in an attempt to mimic the hit film "Jackass: The Movie."

 

Wu initially told police he was set on fire Friday night while walking from the Issaquah-Skyline football game. Police were told that two men walking past the Issaquah teen flicked cigarette ashes onto his shirt and it caught fire, and that Wu's friends tried to smother the flames but had to tear off the boy's shirt.

 

Issaquah Police were suspicious of the boys’ story. After questioning the 15-year-old and his friends it soon became apparent that their story wasn't the truth.

 

“And then when you see the final 40 seconds of the videotape where the shirt is actually burning, and then they are trying to put the shirt out, that was a reality check where you thought 'wow this is something that is really wrong.' You know they didn't plan it to go this way," said Sgt. Kevin Nash, Issaquah Police Dept.

 

"The statements from his friends said it was a stunt similar to that movie and mentioned the movie "Jackass" and said he himself had said he planned this for some time,” said Patrol Cmdr. Stan Conrad, Issaquah Police Dept.

 

“Jackass” is a popular movie, especially among teen-age boys. The film has no plot. It's just a group of men who perform wild stunts - the more extreme the better.

Moviemakers put up a disclaimer but it doesn't seem to stop anyone who is determined.

 

Wu suffered severe burns to his torso, arms, face, head and ears. He was listed in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center on Sunday.

 

His father, Michael Wu, sent out a statement apologizing for the confusion caused by his son's act. He said the teen will be in the hospital about a week, and will need months more to recover from the burns.

 

Police said Kelvin Wu could face possible charges of obstruction of justice, and reckless burning or reckless endangerment.

 

"The warning's there and if anyone is contemplating doing any act like this they need to stop and think about what they are planning because obviously this young man is going to be scarred for life and he has a long road ahead of him to heal,” said Conrad.

 

This is not the first time an accident has been linked to "Jackass." Last year a 13-year-old Connecticut boy was seriously burned after trying to imitate the TV show.

 

The TV show has been canceled but the movie, which was released a few weeks ago, opened at No. 1 and is now ranked No. 5 in the country.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Today I was attacked by a snafflehound. What a vicious creature. He bites and will eat all the food around before he makes peace. I think the attack will produce a scar on my hand. I hear Charlie was attacked by the same critter Cunning little creature-

 

[RobBob]

I was afraid that Uncle Tricky's other injury, involving stapling, had something to do with this:

Jackass Star Steve-O Turns Himself In On Obscenity Charges

[freeclimb9]

Too many scars to recount.

One of the funnier wounds I've ever gotten was suffered as a carpenter. I landed on my ass during a wall-lift maneuver, and got stuck with a few 16 penny nails. I had to unbuckle my toolbelt and pull to get the back nailbag unfastened from my cheek. Didn't bleed nearly as much as a head wound.

[rbw1966]

Three stitches in my chin from where I fell asleep whilst driving an armored personnel carrier and struck the one in front of mine, thus causing my chin to impact with the hatch. Said the WO medic who was roused to render aid: "You're a Ranger, you dont need any anesthesia".

 

Oh, I beg to differ.

 

Three inch scar on the back of my head from a slip-and-fall in a kitchen at McMenamins.

 

One inch scar on my left index finger received pre-Darwin-Awards after taunting a bull snake in my high school science class. He did, indeed, move much faster than I.

[Figger_Eight]

During wrestling practice in college my ear nearly got torn off. I needed 12 stitches to sew the upper portion back onto my head.

[TimL]

quote:

---

Originally posted by chris_w:

I have a nice 1 inch scar right below my index knuckle. While washing a glass, I shoved my hand in it and twisted. A piece of the glass cracked off and I got a nice bleeder. I just slapped a band-aid on it. I was in college and didn't want to pay for the stitches, so it's a nice scar.

---

Same thing happened to me a couple years ago 2 weeks before I was about to leave on a road trip to the Valley. Thank God it healed fast.

[Off_White]

Life is long, scars are many. I'll try and stick to the amusing ones:

 

A nice grey dot smack in the middle of the lifeline on my left palm, result of riding on a skateboard (with old clay wheels) with my hands in my jacket pocket. The inevitable collision with a small rock stopped the board cold. Objects which are in motion tend to stay in motion, so I continued forward and when my feet hit the ground the pencil in my pocket neatly skewered my palm and broke off.

 

I have two small scars on my face, courtesy of the neighbor's dog when I was three. Preliminary investigation suggested that old collies did not like to be messed with when they ate. Further investigation two weeks later, following the scientific method, proved this hypothesis and added the second scar.

[rbw1966]

I wonder how many scars saw their birth in the following:

 

"Hold my beer" quickly followed by "Watch this!"

[Greg_W]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Off White:

I have two small scars on my face, courtesy of the neighbor's dog when I was three. Preliminary investigation suggested that old collies did not like to be messed with when they ate. Further investigation two weeks later, following the scientific method, proved this hypothesis and added the second scar.

---

Hence the reason you abandoned your dream of scientific research for a career in construction?

 

Greg W

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

Let's see, here ...

 

There's the scar on the knee from when DFA was peeling logs with a draw-knife, sitting on the logs, scooting backwards, and pulling the knife in, when ... *thunk!* ... got that knee a little too close to the log and straight into the path of the draw-knife! Didn't help that the Doctor was wearing shorts, either.

 

Or the one on the arm from when DFA was moving the ironing board after doing some ironing in his cramped studio apartment, and the unplugged but still-hot iron tipped over and the side of the iron came to rest against the Doctor's forearm. Lesson: don't move a wobbly ironing board with a hot iron on top of it, especially if you're clumsy as hell.

 

And then the scar/perpetual patch of dead skin on the index finger where a young and still-new-to-the-commercial-kitchen DFA was slicing carrots and neatly lopped off the corner of his finger tip. Of course, it didn't help that the Doctor pulled off the remaining flapper, which was hanging by a thread. With nothing to cover the wound up, it was still bleeding after 20 minutes of direct pressure and ice. So, off to the hospital! Of course, there was nothing to stitch closed, so the ER doc figures he'll just put some silver nitrate on there to close the wound up. It comes on a dainty little cotton swab, and sounds innocuous enough. Of course, it's just a chemical burn that cauterizes the wound - feels great on all those freshly-exposed nerves. "It might sting a little bit ..." Right, a little bit. Try "it might sting a little bit more than grinding away at the wound with a salt block." Fucking doctors.

 

And of course the usual assortment of knee and elbow scars from various bicycle and skateboard shenanigans, and a good selection of scars on the hands from woodworking.

[jon]

Left forearm.

Two 4 inch scars.

One 1 inch scar where my bone decided to exit my body.

2 3.5 inch steel plates.

14 screws.

1 week in the hospital.

2 months of rehab.

$30,000.

 

A month full of morphine, oxycontin, percocet, and a hot ass nurse. Priceless.

[rbw1966]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jon:

. . . a hot ass nurse. Priceless.

---

Did this perchance occur in San Fran?

[allison]

Age 2

Scar on nose, 2 x 1/4". Cause: being a little kid. Still remember Dr. Teays sewing me up sans anasthesia.

 

Age 20

Surgery scar on left elbow, 3". First in a series of broken bones, my sort of version of performance art. Cause: wearing bowling shoes as fashion item. It was the 80s.

 

Age 22:

Jagged scar on right knee, 2". Cause: listening to roadie, and thinking he was not bullshitting me regarding contents of road box.

 

Age 29

Surgery scar on left foot, 5" Cause: not cleaning bottom of rock shoes. Something about me and shoes....

 

Age 32

big nasty scar on left knee, 2 1/2 x 3/4. Cause: motorcycle picked up nail on way home from work, causing flat tire, exacerbated by sporty front braking into turns riding technique. Special thanks to the ER doc who did such a poor job of cleaning the wound, causing secondary infection.

 

To be continued...

[sobo]

Left interior forearm: Several hook knife/chemical burn scars, all about 1 inch long. Years ago, pre-college education and current desk job, I worked in the textile manufacturing industry. Rayon is made from a combination of caustic soda and paper pulp.

 

Without a lot of explanation, I cut myself on several occasions while performing my duties on the yarn spinning floor.The caustic soda enters the fresh laceration, and CS will eat to the bone unless neutralized. How does one neutralize CS, you may ask? Well, interestingly enough, rayon is made by spinning liquid CS through a platinum jet into a hot (120 F) zinc sulphate acid bath. Now are you getting the picture? Education and opportunity saved me from an untimely death at the hands of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America.

 

...sobo

[glacier_dup1]

To add to the list of facial and ear injuries.

 

Age 2: Scar under right eye with matching enhanced 'dimple' below - discovered the family Dalmation did not like to be cornered under the kitchen table.

 

Age 12: Approx. 30 stitches to reattach top of ear after inadvertantly getting hit with softball bat during game on last day of school. Glasses bow broke and punched through the cartilage. The memory of the sound of sutures being pulled through cartilage still gives me the willies.

 

Misc. - enough bushwack scars on forearms and shins to guarantee never having an even tan.

 

Damn - the scars from the 2 knee surgeries (orthoscope) are too small and clean to show.

[ScottP]

Even as a small child I remember bumping my head alot. My earliest rememberence of this blurry series of cranial mishaps came even before kindergarten. Eating ice cream at Grandma and Grandpa's house was always a big treat, even back in the days when I was eating in a highchair. This was also about the time I learned of ice cream headaches. Throwing my head back and howling was enough to pitch me over backward onto the floor, chair and all. As a toddler, I remember borrowing all of the elastic headband things that my sisters used to hold their hair back. Pretending to be an Indian, with all of these headband things strapped to my forehead, I ran whooping throughout the house, just like the Indians on TV would do. Since there were so many of these headband things on my forehead, some of them slipped down over my eyes. Running hither and yon, I tripped on some unseen object (probably my feet), and crashed into the edge of the coffee table. The resulting, copius head-wound-type bleeding ruined every one of those headband things, much to my sisters chagrin.

There is in my memory a brief hiatus in the string of injuries I had started with the infamous Head Band Incident (This is not to say they didn’t occur so much as I just can’t remember them.). This lull ended quite abruptly one fine June day in 1964 when I suffered a karmic fall from a sycamore tree while trying to steal baby sparrows from the nest. The ensuing broken left femur and lacerated chin provided me with the experience of six weeks on my back in traction, and another four weeks in a cast that extended from my armpits down the length of my left leg to just short of my toes. Not letting a little thing like this keep me down (literally), I was eventually up and lumbering around in this plaster leisure suit. In retrospect, I imagine I looked something like a cross between the Mummy and Frankenstein. The resulting pressure on my abdomen from standing in the cast was diagnosed as the cause of a mysterious bout of vomiting, so I was required to stay off my feet. This two and a half months of forced immobility resulted in a pair of severely atrophied limbs. After removing the cast, the doctor thought it would be a good idea for me to start riding a bike in order that I might avoid wearing braces on my incredibly skimpy legs. So I did, and quickly collided with the back of my Aunt Betty’s maroon, ‘64 Dodge Dart that was parked in front of our house. The patching I got from my friend, Doctor “Damned Two-Wheel Vehicles” Johnson, came complete with a nifty pressure bandage wound turban-like around my head. It was said that all I needed was an American flag, a fife, and a drum to complete the ensemble.

I started first grade walking on crutches with this serious looking pressure bandage wrapped around my head. It made for a lot of ‘fun’ kickball games and childish ridicule. I continued riding the bike I had borrowed from Lonny Bitzer. It was too small for me, but it had two ‘damned’ wheels, so I eventually got pretty cocky on the thing. Too cocky, in fact: Taft, CA. is pretty well known for very few reasons. One of them is the size of the tumbleweeds that occasionally roll through town. One of the larger of the species found its way onto our street one fall day. It looked pretty spindly, so I decided that I would ride my borrowed bike Evel Kneivel-style right through it and send it shattering into a million pieces. Tumbleweeds are pretty resilient. This one launched me like a rocket straight up into the air. I remember being pretty high up, the street seeming to get narrower below me. Surprisingly, I recovered from the ensuing landing fairly quickly and got back on my bike, muttering six year old oaths at the demon weed as I wobbled away.

I have, after much contemplation, come to the conclusion that the reason I was able to shake off this pair of post-femur breaking launch and splash down episodes was due to the high pain threshhold I had gained from The Nurse at The Hospital during The Traction Episode. She spent much time, and seemed to gain fiendish delight in, torturing me in the name of medicine while I lay helpless with a fractured femur and festering chin stitches. She was a wicked, rough old bitch who had me do pull-ups on a bar suspended over my bed while she changed the sheets underneath me. She wouldn’t answer my buzzer at night, causing me to pee on myself. Upon discovering this aberrant behavior, she would sternly reprimand me for being so “messy”. I’ve heard children wondering where the legs go when Dorothy and Toto land Auntie Em’s house on the Wicked Witch of the East. Glenda and those munchkins have us believing that she’s dead. Well, she isn’t. She’s very much alive and still working at Memorial Hospital in Bakersfield, California because witches are immortal, you know.

As a child I was always experimenting with cause and effect relationships; like what happens when you put a board on a fulcrum with a rock on one end and then you jump on the other end. “It hits you in the head.”, was the observation I made during this experiment. Several stitches over my right eye was the resulting prognosis made by my friend, Doctor Johnson. Many years later, while studying physics, I happened upon a description of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “Whenever one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body exerts a force on the first body; these forces are equal in magnitude and oppositely directed.” I pondered this concept only briefly before coming to the conclusion that if Newton had been beaned by a six pound chunk of quartz instead of just an apple, he might have deleted the “...these forces are equal in magnitude...” part.

I was never really big on playing sports, but that never stopped me from being enthused about the game of hitting rocks with a pick axe handle to see how far they would go. Neighborhood friends also found great satisfaction in this seemingly harmless pasttime. Stevie Kranyak was particularly adept at batting rocks, and was in fact, the first switch hitter I ever knew. I found out about switch hitting by standing on the wrong side of him as he pasted a line drive all the way across the street. His follow through pasted me to the ground, adding to the bump that my Aunt Betty’s Dart had permanantly afixed to my forehead and drawing yet another draft of blood. My father, apparently afraid of the pointed questions now coming from the staff of my friend, Doctor Johnson, figured that this latest opening in my flesh could be mended with a butterfly bandage. He was right and the resulting scar caused by Stevie’s scathing swing and my inattention to his left-handedness is probably less obvious for this first aid than the stitches my friend, Doctor Johnson, would have cussingly installed.

As time went by, the usual cuts, abrasions, and contusions a healthy boy will incur during normal play were interspersed with the unusual events that only someone cursed with a bump-prone head can appreciate. I faintly remember walking to school one day, totally engrossed in a book, when a telephone pole stepped in my way and cold cocked me in the forehead. My cousin Liane found this to be particularly amusing. She was walking right next to me and could have warned me, if her pentient for witnessing such amusing sights hadn’t interfered with her family-held duty of warning me of such imminent danger.

The next catastrophe that befell the region above my torso was after we had moved to the other side of town (which really wasn’t much of a move given the diminuititve size of Taft). I had acquired my own Stingray bike and was steadily increasing proficiency in it’s operation. I’d learned how to ride long wheelies, and it was this very activity that was the reason for my next demise. That, and the fact that I failed to put lock washers on the nuts of the front wheel axle. Dropping off the curb in a full wheelie right in front of my house, the front tire popped off and rolled across the street. The now-bare forks bit into the pavement, and milliseconds later so did my chin. It was, in fact, the first part of me to touch down. I remember hearing my friend Glenn, who was riding next to me, say, “Ooooo!”, as though he knew the excruciating pain I had just experienced. I got up off the ground in a bell-rung stupor, blood dripping onto my shirt, and headed for my house. Seeing my sister’s boyfriend coming out of the front door, I managed a feeble, “Help?”, before pitching face first into the lawn, out like a light. When I awoke, I was on my bed. My sister’s boyfriend was holding a towel to my chin. My sisters were running around frantically giving my mom reports on my condition while she calmly put on her make-up in another part of the house. I suppose that for her these events had become pretty mundane.

I heard my friend, Doctor Johnson, even before he entered the emergency room. He came in cussing, cussed while he stitched me up, and I could still hear him cussing long after he had left. That night, with a jaw that would only open a matter of millimeters, I sat down to a steak dinner prepared by my mom. Fortunately, the baked potatoes mashed up pretty well and I was able to take some sustenance that evening. “Why steak?”, I still ask myself.

Even as an adult I’m not immune to connecting my head to immoveable objects with a certain degree of force: I have never been very good at finding things in big stores. One day I was walking through a hardware store diligently trying to find some object by looking down each aisle as I walked by. I never did find what I was looking for, but I did find one of the concrete-filled metal support poles that held up the roof. It nailed me right on the Dodge-Dart-pick-axe-handle bump, completely blinding me and sending me to the floor. All I remember as I went down was some unseen guy saying ,”Ooooo!”, as though he knew the excruciating pain I felt at that moment. (There is no way he could have known the pain I felt at that moment.) I blindly picked myself up off the floor. This still unseen person asked me if I was okay. I lied that I was fine and started taking a few wobbly steps as my vision began to return. Stumbling around the hardware store, bell-rung and vision blurred, I tried my darndest to remember why I was there. To this day I do not know what it was I was looking for. I have probably since purchased it for I’m certain there was a need for it, but even if this is the case, I'm sure I never related it to the TKO I suffered at the hardness of that concrete-filled metal pole.

Climbing has been a consuming passion of mine for more than half my life. An odd sport to indulge in considering my track record. I'm a fair climber, but even the best can't always avoid the objective dangers. Phil, Mike and I retreated from the West Ridge of Forbidden Peak in the Washington Cascades due to my not wanting to lead what had to be lead with what little equipment we had. We rappelled the coulior leading to the start of the ridge. I was standing at the mouth of the coulior waiting for Phil to pull the ropes. As I stood up from putiing something in my pack, A glittering object with a hummingbird sound appeared before my face. I had only enough time to turn sideways as the fist-sized chunk of ice nailed me in the forehead. A glancing blow, it still knocked my sunglasses off my face and sent me reeling. The physical damage was superficial and we continued with our descent. Back at work that Monday, my boss asked me what happened to my face. I related the event to him. His response was "Appropriate name for a peak."

I am currently in one of the lulls between thumpings. I figure that now that I am older, I won’t have this problem anymore. Then again, with my track record, I can’t help but feel that this lull will eventually end and I’ll soon be adding to the bumps that grace my skull.

[allison]

 

Excellent non-fiction work!

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

In the humble opinion of relatively un-head-wounded Dr. Flash Amazing, that was one of the most enjoyable pieces of tragicomic message board entertainment ever.

 

"Oooooo!"

 

[To_The_Top]

Nice trip to my childhood, can really relate to it all. Dont ask me about my first thunderstorm.

Much later in life:

Left leg...

Got hit by a car passing on the shoulder and I was on a bike, bones protruding and several surgeries later and metal plates, I would break the same leg again years later on a climb and get more plates, surgury and scars.

Most of the scars are from biking though.

I dont ever set off the metal detectors at the airport though.

 

[ 11-11-2002, 10:53 PM: Message edited by: To The Top ]

[sk]

ScottP man, that was beautiful And I totaly know what you mean. I always hated sports and the such just because if there was a way for something to hit my head, it would I have a 3 inch scar on the back of my head because my dad left me on a stack of dog food bags at a groceriy store when I was almost 2 I fell backwords behind the stack and was either cut by something or split my head. Verry cool memeory though, every thing is black and white excetp the blood and the red VW bug my parents drove then. about a year, maybe 2 later I was running threw the house to tell my mom some 3 year old thing and ran smack into the wall and split my eyebrow open. I still have a place on my brow that does not grow eyebrow. I have a verry cool scar on the back of my right forarm from a surgery that an army doc insisted I neded when I was 6 months old. I have 3 scars arround my belly button and a 5 inch scar where no one can see it but JK. scars are cool, like tatoos in a way. They mark time, and experience. They tell stories about who we once were and who we are now.

[not_a_climber]

All the big kids in the neighborhood were riding down from the top of the Big Hill. I decided to try it. I think I'd only been riding my bike for a couple weeks. My bike was different from theirs. It didn't have brakes. The pedals went proportionatley faster as the speed of the wheels increased. No such thing as coasting. My neighbor had given it to me (of course I had refused it at first because it was a girl's bike, but he was good with metal and fastened a bar from the stem to the seat post to save me from this extreme embarassment). The wipeout occurred about halfway down at which point the pedals and wheels were moving much faster than my little legs could keep up with them.

 

Me and my friend built a treehouse way up in a cedar. We cut off all the branches below it so any enemy neighbor kids couldn't get up it. We used a long section of rubber hose to shinny up. We cut off more branches to make rooom for the floor and walls and tossed them over the side into the stickers that grew high up among the surrounding trees and brush. My friend then jumps over the side and pulling me with him. At first the nest of pine boughs held. Then we plummeted fast, but it was actually more like an elevator ride the way it stopped at the bottom. Pretty fun actually.

 

Am I the only one that's been hit in the head with a baseball bat?

[freeclimb9]

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