A Series of Scars: Incident #3

Alright kids. Pay attention. This one is for you:

I was sitting in my bedroom one afternoon playing with matches (right away you know this isn't going to end well).  I honestly have no idea how old I was, though definitely old enough to know better. I sat there next to my bed holding the box of matches, looking around the room for something I could set on fire. Something that wouldn't go all crazy on me or explode and that wasn't attached to the main frame of the house. But I came up with nothing. Until I looked down at my rose colored carpet. BINGO.

I immediately got out a pair of scissors and snipped off a fiber from my carpet. It couldn't have been more than a 1/2" long or so, but I held it between my fingers and struck the match. As soon as I lit the piece of carpet fiber, it started to melt. I looked frantically around for something to catch the drip of polyester that would fall at any moment. But I was too slow. Before I knew it, the liquid carpet dripped down onto my leg and bored a hole about 10 feet deep into my skin.

The deep, circular burn mark was just above my right knee and hurt so bad I could have screamed. But I didn't scream. I didn't make a peep. I immediately acknowledged the idiocy of my actions and swore to myself that I would not say a word to anyone. That's the worst part about doing stupid stuff as a kid. If you end up hurting yourself, who are you going to go cry to? Your parents?! 

So there you go. Kids, if you do not learn from my idiocy here, I cannot be responsible for the failure that your life will become. When the grown-ups tell you not to play with matches, THERE'S A REASON. And the reason is: You're a dumb kid who's going to burn the house down. I know. I have the scar to prove it.

A Series of Scars: Incident #2

I'm not really sure how old I was when I got this next scar, probably 10 or so. It was a Friday night and my parents had dropped me off at my friend Tiffany's house for a sleepover. Tiffany's dad was playing in some basketball game over at one of the high schools so we went to watch.

Being young girls, we had a short attention span when it came to watching basketball games, so we found other things to entertain ourselves. The bleachers we were sitting on were open underneath, so Tiffany and I went down there to mess around for a while. Of course there were other kids down there too... BOYS. So I thought it'd be fun to play "keep-away", as in, run away from the boys. So the boys were at one end of the bleachers and Tiffany and I started running away from them towards the other end. I was ahead of Tiffany and just as we slowed down, almost to the other side, I bumped my head on a corner of the bleachers.

As I was standing there rubbing the sore spot on my head I noticed it felt warm. I walked out into the light and held my hand out. To my horror my hand was covered in blood.

"Tiffany! My head is bleeding!"

"Oh crap! Let's go tell my mom!"

Luckily her mom is sitting towards the end of the bleachers talking with another lady.

"Mom..."

"Just a second..." she says a few moments before turning around to see why we're pestering her.

As she turns around and looks at my blood covered head, her eyes get big. She jumps up, grabs my hand and we race across the sidelines of the basketball court towards the bathroom, blood dripping on the floor in our wake.

For the next half hour or so I sat on the white tile of the bathroom floor while several women mopped up my head and found towels to stop the bleeding. It was sort of a trippy experience and all sort of a blur. I was very calm the entire time and didn't cry or freak out or anything. Eventually my mom showed up and we drove to the emergency room to get some stitches.

It must have been a slow night at the emergency room because I don't think we really had to wait. We went in and I sat on a bed surrounded by open curtains while the nurse gave me a numbing shot on the top of the head. I remember the shot stung a little as the liquid was injected. A few minutes later the doctor came in, threw in a couple stitches and sent us on our way.

Understandably I didn't sleep over at Tiffany's house that night. In fact, I don't know that I ever slept over at her house again. Of course what parent in their right mind would let an accident-prone kid like me stay over after a fiasco like that? Not Tiffany's parents, that's for sure.

A Series of Scars: Incident #1

I've always been somewhat of an anti-thrill seeker. I don't like jumping off of high stuff or doing flips or crazy stunts. Which means that any scars I've accumulated over the years haven't come from doing really amazing things. Most of them have come from being clumsy or stupid which means there are stories involved with each and every one of them. As some of these stories are quite lengthy in their explanation, I've decided to do a series of posts about how I got each of these scars. Here is the first:

Scar #1:

When I was about 8 years old, my family took a short overnight camping trip to a lake up along Skyline Drive. This is an epic trip in Holley family history. Probably the most memorable for us all. We were the only ones at the small emerald colored lake that day and spent our time making rafts out of logs and twine we found strewn around the shore.

After a day full of building & testing our rafts, the time came to head into the camper as it was starting to rain. My dad took us girls outside to do our last bathroom run of the evening and apparently it was during this time he noticed I had a small bulge on the right side of my lower abdomen/groin.

Following the camping trip my mom took me to a doctor who had me turn and cough in order to confirm their suspicions. Sure enough I had a hernia. I knew what a hernia was because my dad had explained it to me before the doctor visit. However, somewhere along the line I misinterpreted the conversation because I thought I'd gotten a hernia from pushing too hard while doing my business that night in the rain on the camping trip. I was so embarrassed. Luckily when the doctor asked how I'd gotten the hernia, my mom piped up during my stutterfest and said they didn't know how I'd done it. I just thought she was covering for me. Turns out they really didn't know how I'd done it, they'd just noticed it while I was doing my business.

The surgery was scheduled for a couple weeks out, during which time I would periodically push on my squishy lump of guts to smooth it back into place. I don't remember much about surgery day even though it was the first I ever had. I do remember being sore for the next few days and not being able to walk very well.

For years I thought I'd gotten my hernia by pushing too hard while pooping. Which made it a topic I didn't ever bring up. When people would talk about their scars, I wouldn't mention mine because I didn't want to say where it was or how I'd gotten it. These days that 3" purple scar has faded to white and is barely visible. In fact I always forget I have it. But, it was my first real scar and it always makes me laugh whenever I see it.