Do you have a [skin] scar with a story?

yes

Multiple scars on hands from being a kid with access to knives and tools. Scars from knee surgery, I have a “chain ring tattoo” which is a line of scars on my calf from a mountain bike chain ring. I’d like to say it was some spectacular wreck but it was just a clip-in, clip-out fumble. I have a scar on my forehead from hitting my head on railing as a kid. I have a nasty burn scar on my forearm from a hot motorcycle exhaust. I have a road rash scar on that same arm from a mountain bike wreck. That one was spectacular, took me out of the whole riding season. I was literally picking out small bits of gravel and sand with tweezers when cleaning it up. All of mine were either directly or indirectly a result of doing something stupid.

I have a scar on my wrist. My dad had taken me to a podiatrist when I was about 10. I had a planters wart on my foot. My dad asked him to look at a lump on my wrist. The doc said it was a cyst and he could remove it. Doctor kept telling me not to look as he had a scared look on his face. His nurse looked on with a horrified look on hers. Apparently he was just digging it out.

My scars tell the same story you will get if you ask me for my life story. Huge vertical scar down the center of my abdomen paired with a circular scar to the right is the telltale sign of colectomy. The circle is where my small intestine exited my body for seven months between surgeries, where my ileostomy was. The center scar is where the surgeon did all his magic. It’s much wider than it needed to be due to a mishap with it coming open during healing.

I know surgical scars aren’t as interesting to people as ones that were caused by some mayhem, but my surgeries changed my life.

@Mariah You are one tough chick.

I have a small scar on the back of my hand. It has a V shape, or more like a shape of a scissor’s blade. When I was very young, about 4 or 5, I remember being asked some question by my kindergarten teacher. I couldn’t answer. She then pulled me towards her and cut my hand with a scissor. I don’t know how the mark managed to stay until today.

I have a scar on my calf from an ocelot bite, and a scar as well as hammer finger on my left hand from a binturong bite. I have weird, thin, straight, parallel scars over my middle finger knuckles from a tiger sucking on my fingers.

I have a “bikini scar” from emergency surgery after an ectopic rupture, and subtle scars from my breast reduction.

My forearms have so much scarring that they look like a roadmap of scratches and bites (mostly scratches) from 30 years of veterinary medicine.

There is not enough space in the server to cover all the stories behind the scars. They are the battle ribbons, the history of a person. I see giant grouper, whales, sharks, porpoises and manatees with scars and I think of all the seas and circumstances they’ve wandered in and out of. The torn gash marks from a gaff hook around the mouth, the spiraled scar of a propeller blade the length of the back, the fishnet imprint from a near capture, puncture marks from bullet wounds, the missing eye, the partial dorsal fin—and they are still swimming. I feel the same when I see scarred up humans. There is a story behind everyone of these. It shows experience, a life lived. I love scars.

Great Question.

So, then, do you admit to any recent scars, @ARE_you_kidding_me? ~

That’s just wrong, @chyna. If the nurse saw the look on the Dr.s face, (or vice versa) she should have maintained a poker face, at least. Well, someone should have.
Reminds me of having a benign tumor removed above my right ear. Because of the location, the noise of the scalpel may as well have been a chin saw!

I’ve heard of your colon surgeries, @Mariah, but I don’t recall your age when they occurred. I worked with a guy that had quite a bit of his colon removed, and he was in discomfort most of the time.

I think the scars we get when we’re younger often just get bigger with age, @Mimishu1995.

Wow. 30 years, @syz. Any word on when you might get back into collecting some new scars? I have scars on my forearms that are from shallow, scratch type injuries. For some reason the skin seems especially thin there.

@Espiritus_Corvus’ “Ode to Scars”. Have you finished a book yet? Maybe you could gather the ‘collected works from Fluther’ and put us all on the map.

Back in my drinking days, I used to say, I have a scar for each of my really memorable drunks.”

The one on my palm, the surgical scars on my ankle, the “l” shaped one between my eyebrows…

I was 19. I was very sick from 14 until 19. Doing a lot better now. My whole colon is out.

Oh, and I have a decent sized scar on the thick of my left had from opening oysters with a wood chisel, @Espiritus_Corvus.

I’ve done my share of drinking, but I can’t think of a single scar I owe to it, @zenvelo.

That’s a particularly tough age to go through that, @Mariah. As if puberty, middle school and high school isn’t enough stress on a teen. I honestly cannot imagine.

@syz That’s pretty badass too. “oh what is that scar from” “It was a tiger”
@ibstubro The motorcycle exhaust scar was from a year ago.

Oh, then that’s a distracted scar, @ARE_you_kidding_me. Not a stupid scar. ~

Haha, no it was quite dumb but easy to do. I wish I could chalk that up to age but I can’t

I have several scars on my stomach from multiple abdominal surgeries. The worst of that is not so much “skin” scarring, but internal. I have severe internal scarring from illness and surgical intervention. I have a ton of self injury scars from when I was a kid, I had a difficult childhood and I have suffered with depression for most of my life. Luckily, the self injury is something that I overcame quite early on, but the scars have stayed loud well into my adulthood. I have a scar under my bottom lip from falling off of my swingset and knocking my two front teeth through my lip (they were lodged in a 2×4 that made up the side of a sandbox). I have a small scar on my forehead from an assault. I have a scar from a cat bite on the back of my hand that looks like a face, and another scar on the knuckle of that same hand from a dog bite. I also have less interesting scars, I might just have a lot of scars, but I feel like most scars have stories.

Wow, @ANef_is_Enuf. You are a tough one.
I understand about the self-injury scars, but mine are small and relatively hidden. My cat bite scar is on my bottom lip, where your front teeth got your lip.

This is a good forum for asking/telling about scars. In person. you never know if a person’s scar was traumatic or not.

I don’t deny that I have been through a lot, but I don’t think I’m particularly tough. You take what you’re dealt, I guess?
Fun question.

Glad you stopped in, @ANef_is_Enuf.

Oh Lord yes!!

more than one
clumsy kid

http://i.imgur.com/pCux9RJ.jpg

When I was about 13 we got booted out of our apartment and went to live at a campsite until the next social security check. Mom went off to do something so I though I would skateboard around. There were very large hills at this campsite. I bombed one and got the wobbles. Wheel pinched the deck and I was tossed. I have no clue how long I was out. I woke up in the back of a park ranger van. My clothes were shredded down the side and I was covered in blood and it took around 30 minutes to find my shoes. I hit the ground so hard it knocked my shoes off. (Like Stand By Me)

That took off a good chunk of skin. I had to wear special bandages so I could shower without it getting wet. And yeah, I am a bit confused by that too but I was so banged up and we stayed with my grandma since she was a nurse and said I needed to keep water away from it. Think hamburger.

Fast forward 20 years.

Hopped up on a bit of Mickeys and Coke we go out skating. There is a nice incline in front of McArthur Court

Note that this is right next to were the Ducks worked out at the time.

So I was trying to go as fast as I possible could down a hill and see how far I could ollie.

The answer is very far but about a foot after I landed I hit a large crack. This instantly stopped the skateboard and flung me off.

Normally when people fall/crash you chuckle for a bit and feel concern.

I was once again knocked out. From what the people I were with it was so bad there wasn’t any giggles. Everyone just rushed to see if I was still alive. It ripped off the park scar and it was somewhat comforting to hear that people rushed to my assistance.

So the scar in the original pic is pretty much scar v2.0 since the first was brutally removed.

I’ve got some small surgical scars, but my favourite is the scar on my finger where I was mauled by a rabbit.

I once slipped and fell on a travelator, and got a nice little scar on my chin, two little rectangles, from where my chin and the prongs connected.
It had been raining outside and I went to take a step on the travelator, but slipped. I got a free bottle of water out of the ordeal, and they stopped the travelators as a result

Okay, now the stories, @disquisitive & @babaji!

Knowing your rep, @johnpowell, I’m sure there are more scars, probably as bad.

Mauled, and all it got was finger, @Earthbound_Misfit?

What the heck is a travelator, @IheartMypuppy?

A travelator is like a flat escalator

OH! Okay. When you say it, I know exactly! Thanks.
Now wasn’t that much easier than me having to look it up? lol

I have several scars. I don’t quite remember which ones I’ve talked about here and which I haven’t, but the first is definitely the most hilarious. Now it’s just a barely-there indentation above the outside edge of my right eyebrow.

I was 5–7 years old. My dad’s work had gotten a pair of scooters for the employees to zip down the halls between the offices. He had brought my sister and me with him one day to work (don’t remember exactly why) and let us each take a scooter. For whatever reason I veered into the corner of a wall—I still remember the moment; I didn’t have any reason for veering, I just suddenly turned the handle bars. Ducked my head just enough for it to hit the upper side of my head instead of my nose. I was young, so all I thought was “I’d better tell dad.” I ran to his office but he wasn’t there (at a meeting) so I kept running around in circles looking for him.

This is when I learned that split-skin-on-head + running-around-heart-pumping = extra blood. And I was wearing mostly white/light colors. And the offices had clear glass windows and open doors into the hall. So I’m running past all these employees in their offices, and all they see is a little 5–7-year-old-girl with a hand pressed on her head and blood all over her shirt, skirt, and shoes, calling “daddy? daddy?”

I was taught not to talk to strangers. And all these strange people in their offices trying to talk to me and asking me “who’s your dad?” and “are you alright?” and “let me get you a bandage” seemed an awful lot like strangers. So I kept running.

Very quickly I had a hoard of adults running after me down the halls, shouting after me to get my name, my dad’s name, and to try to get me to stop so they could administer first aid. The shouting drew more attention. The hoard kept growing. I began to feel like I was behaving a little absurdly. Finally the one guy in the front convinced me to stop running, to turn around, and to give him my dad’s name.

After that the hoard split up in different directions, everyone shouting my dad’s name. With so many people scouring the halls, he was found very quickly—several people descended on him from different directions asking “do you have a little daughter here?” and saying “there’s a lot of blood.” Not the things a dad wants to hear.

I remember finally running into him—by that point he was running too, shouting my name. Then a trip to the ER, a doctor who quickly grew impatient with my not liking a needle right above my eye, and a single stitch.

Oh, and a discussion of what “don’t talk to strangers” actually meant.

Great story, @Soubresaut! Another “nearly dead” bloodsoaked kid that was barely more than scratched. Parental heart attack.

I have a decent sized scar on my right kneecap.
I cut a slice in my knee on the drain at the bottom of the community pool. I’ve always had a super-high metabolism = bleeder. I remember seeing the discolored water, and then realizing all that red was coming from me. People were freaked out! I’m not sure I even got stitches.
That was 45 years ago. Imagine if that happened today, with all the concern about blood-born pathogens and the like. They probably would evacuate the pool for the day and have to drain the water before the parents would let the kids in again.

Haha..just a sampling of a few of my scars.
4 inch incision scar on left armpit area from pin in my shoulder after bad horse wreck years ago. Doc sawed off a useless nub on my collarbone and fashioned a cool bracket so my shoulder will never dislocate again.

10 inch incision around right side of my waist from kidney surgery to repair a blocked Ureter.

4 inch slash scar on right leg from psycho cat attacking me as a child

Small ding/dent scar in middle of forehead after popping wheelie on dirt bike and hitting a tree. haha

There’s more, but I am too tired to drone on now. lol

I never got a scar from it, but I was once hit by a nerf gun with a pin tacked to the edge.
The boy was convinced that every second one shot slightly shorter than the previous one, there were also a couple without pins.
I had previously been holding a pillow up for protection, then he had said he wasn’t shooting anymore, so I lowered it, 5 seconds later there was a nerf gun bullet wiggling on my right arm being held there by a pin, in my arm.
It didn’t actually hurt, but it was surprising.

I remember when I was very little, my dad had come back from surfing and had a nice big scar/welt on his knee. He convinced me that a shark had bitten him, and I was always a bit confused about what it actually was. Turns out he had been stung by a jellyfish.

This is the same man who went surfing in indonesia, stacked on a wave, and was scraped back and forth on a bed of coral.

This is also the man who (again surfing) stacked on his long board, the fin found its way to his thigh, dug in, and snapped off. We had to take him to a hospital where he got several stitched from a doctor who confessed to him, minutes before putting the stitches in, that he had never actually given a real person stitches, and this was his first time with a live human being.

I was cut open so they could pull a baby out of me.

That sounds cooler than saying cesarean section, doesn’t it?

Yes, @Coloma, I imagine you could start at the top and write us a catalog of your scars, head to toe. lol

When I was a kid, the youngest, by brother (6 years older) was fond of shooting me surreptitiously with a BB gun, @IheartMypuppy. A little more obvious when he used darts, and I would find them sticking out of clothes. Otherwise I usually put them off to bee stings/bites.

lol, @dammitjanetfromvegas. Maybe “had a baby surgically removed from my abdomen”?

I don’t really have that many scars, surprisingly. Since I’m young I’ve had a lot of small scars that have just faded. I don’t really have any incredible stories, although when I was 11 I tried to break up a dog fight and my dog accidentally bit me. It was a kind of stupid thing for me to do, considering that the dog who bit me is a mastiff and mastiffs have 552 pounds or 250kg of bite force. Somehow it didn’t hurt. I also have a small dent near my eyebrow from when I got a black on New years day in 2014. 4 minutes after the new year started I got a black, isn’t that a great start to the new year? I don’t know how I got it. It happened, somehow. I guess that will just remain a mystery forever.
I have lots of tiny scars with no real stories, just times I’ve fallen over and stuff. So, yeah!

I can’t believe I forgot this one.

Possibly the stupidest scar I could have, with an equally stupid reason. Let’s call it a mental freeze moment. I was not thinking when it happened.

So, it’s a scar on my left finger, and before I go any further, I have to let you know that this happened at my rowing club, and I am a coxswain.

Anyway, it happened when we were un-loading the boats (they were fours and quads) off of the trailer, (this is what it looked like). So, we were taking the boats off, and I had a feeling that the girls were going to be a bit rough with this one, based on its position in the trailer. So, I stuck my hand so it was protecting the fin from the metal bar above it when the fin came through. Now, this seemed like a logical decision, because coxes are the ones that have to make sure their boats are in working order, and I didn’t want this fin to get smashed up.

So the girls started shuffling the boat forwards, and my hand was still in it’s protective spot. And then, as expected, they suddenly lifted the boat up and kept moving forwards, unluckily for me, they lifted just as the fin was under my hand, squishing my hand and, not cutting it, but sort of puncturing/indenting my finger (?) it’s hard to explain.

Now, you must know, the fins are very sharp, so, I had to shout to the girls to drop the boat down a bit, my poor little finger had been indented pretty badly by the fin. It was blue and red for a while but then scabbed over, and then formed a scar.

I still can’t decide whether it was worth it or not, the fin was fine, so I guess coxing duties fulfilled. But, I don’t think I’ll ever do it again

I’ve got about a 1” slash across the back of my left hand.

I was six or seven and decided to make a picnic for myself and my siblings.

Cutting carrots is hard.

I’ve got a various scars on my hands from work on construction crews, as a farm or ranch hand, or just doing things with my hands; My shins are scarred up because my skin there is so thin they bleed if I bump them on a bench or something. I might not even know I’m bleeding.

I have two particular scars that have stories connected to them. I’ll tell the story about the scar on my middle finger, left hand.

It was a Saturday, must have been summer, (the windows were rolled down), sometime probably in 1957 or 1958. Mom and Dad piled my younger sibs and me into the ‘57 Chevy, and made the 15-mile trip from our small town to the city. This was something we routinely might do on a Saturday, for anything from visiting relatives, getting groceries, or any other reasons.

This particular Saturday we decided to stop at McDonalds Hamburger stand. This was years before they opened their first drive-through, so my dad took our orders and got out of the car. I was in the back seat behind the driver’s seat. The windows had been open, I had my elbow resting on the bottom, and unconsciously had wrapped my hand around the window frame while Dad had opened the door. He closed the door on my finger. When he realized what had happened, he got back opened the door, saw my then-bloody finger, instructed Mom to take care of it while he drove us to the ER, about 10 minutes away.

I don’t remember how long it took at the hospital, but I remember the McDonalds was on our way home, so we stopped again to get our burgers. When Dad turned to close the car door, all he saw was my bandaged finger in the same place on the window frame! Needless to say, he didn’t close the door until he was sure I moved my hand!

I’ve been bitten by numerous cats, @lugerruger, but no dog I remember. Good thing as at one time when I was a kid we had 14 German Shepherds and over 30 cats. Here’s hoping that your serious scar collecting it behind you (i.e. never happens!).

Well, it’s a good story, @IheartMypuppy, anyway. Cool that you were in a rowing club.

Stitches, @Seek? Were carrots the menu, or did you have dip? lol
I took the side of the tip of my thumb off on a commercial meat slicer, slicing carrots for the Holiday Inn buffet. Back then, we just located the tip, slapped a bandage on my thumb, wiped stuff off and kept cooking.

A little slice of American, there, @Yetanotheruser! I once had my hand literally pinned to the seat as I got out of about a ‘53.

Head-to-toe:

A small scar on the back of my head from falling while scaling the fireplace when I was five. A scar above my right eye from a biking accident in my 20’s. A small one under my other eye where they removed a big, oxblood birthmark when I was an infant. One across my nose from breaking it and having it reset four times, two of those in one week, which I don’t want to talk about. One under my chin from getting whacked with the handle of a “come-along” hoist, leaving me with a piece of meat hanging there, enlarged by infection.

A round one about the size of a dollar pancake on my shoulder from skin cancer removal, enlarged by infection. A scar on my clavicle from a compound fracture in a cycling accident. A tear scar on my pec from the same accident. A nice, round one where a guy put his cigar out on my chest while I was wearing a silk shirt after he didn’t like what I said about our presence in Vietnam the day we bugged out. A long incision mark along the inside of my arm where they removed a blocked vein (lucky it wasn’t an artery). A rip scar on my other arm where I tore it on a projecting nail head. An incision on my wrist where they removed a cyst which has returned. A through-and-through puncture wound at the palm of my hand where a saltwater catfish pierced me with it’s awl-like pectoral fin. A through-and-through puncture scar through the web of my thumb on the other hand when I got snagged by a gaff hook, enlarged by infection.

Striation marks along the side of my back after being slammed down and dragged by a wave along the rocky bottom while body surfing at the wrong end of Salmon Creek Beach north of San Francisco. A puncture wound in my back where some crazy sonuvabitch randomly stabbed me while I was walking down Mallory pier in Key West. A scar on my scrotum from where I lost a nut in Cuba.

An 8” jagged scar on the back of my calf from my bike’s flywheel when some idiot opened their car door while parallel parking as I was cruising with the wind in the right lane at about 25mph (see above shoulder and pectoral scars). Two long scars at my lower calf and ankle where they put in three titanium pins after fracturing my fibula after a cycling accident in Sweden. A big horseshoe scar under my foot arch from running over a broken glass insulator while playing touch football barefoot in a vacant lot when I was a kid.

@Espiritus_Corvus I think you win the scarface award. lol

Oh, I forgot my numerous animal bites, wounds. Small crescent scar under right eye, barely visible now, after being bitten in the face by the neighbors evil Doberman Pinscher named ” Apache” when I was 11. Puncture scars on top of right hand and 10 stitches scar across middle finger knuckle from another dog bite. Round puncture scar on inside of left forearm from my daughters evil black cat that fanged me when I took her to the groomers about 10 years ago. Another small puncture scar on left thumb when a “dead” Ground Squirrel attacked me after the cat brought it in and I thought it was dying, so out it on a towel in the shower to die in peace.

It came back to life and leaped on me about an hour later and latched onto my thumb.
Half moon crescent scar on left heel from slashing my foot on river rocks while rafting some years ago. Most recent, nice burn scar on my left middle finger from pressing top of hand against hot oven rack when removing a baking dish. haha

@ibstubro when you said how you chopped the top of your finger off, it reminded me of what happened to my father.

He was cutting something or other, and chopped the top of his thumb off, he went to get it sewn back on, but the doctor sewed it on backwards, so his fingerprint doesn’t match up (it looks pretty dodgy)

It is almost gone now, but you can still see that the print doesn’t quite match up

I have quite a few, some more faded than others.
I have some small ones on my hand, mostly cat scratches and nicks from knives. The middle knuckle on my right hand is also a bit darker than the rest due to me punching the wall so hard it bled.
I have two on my elbow. One was from falling on tarmac whilst playing football (soccer) and the other is from a biking incident.
Another faded scar on my right knee from a motorcycle accident.
And a three inch scar on my left ankle. I had to have surgery for multiple fractures I got whilst playing football. (soccer)
Also, a very mysterious deep scar on my behind. I have no memory or recollection of when or where or how I got it. It’s an inch long, looks like a deep cut from a knife or something. No idea what the story behind that one is xD

As I posted above, I have another scar that tells a story…

I think I was 10, so that would make my little brother about 7. We shared not only a bedroom, but a bed as well, since we couldn’t fit another bed in the room. So one side of the bed was up against the wall.

Dad always had some remodeling or upgrade going on, and at this particular point in time, it happened to be in the boys’ room. Dad had stashed a few 2X4’s “out of the way” between the bed and the wall. What he didn’t anticipate was that when bedtime arrived, his two darling sons would suddenly be transformed into professional wrestling stars Crusher(wrestler) and Dick the Bruiser!

It was the match of the century. After several near pins by each wrestler, the Crusher (me) had the Bruiser (brother) in what looked like dire straits. Suddenly, Bruiser was able to get his feet under the Crusher, and kicked with all his might, tossing the Crusher out of the ring, smashing back to reality, when I fell against the wall, the bed bouncing away, and I landed with my back directly on one of the 2X4’s and creating a gash, the scar of which I carry to this day, almost 60 years later!