I have a three inch scar on the outside of my left thigh. Age has softened it, made it lighter, but it tells a story. In fact, most of our scars tell stories, don’t they?
The one on my right hand was a “bump” that kept growing in college, eventually bothering me when I wrote. The removal, compliments of the Herington Hospital, was fascinating. It was 1989 and I hadn’t realized doctors could deaden an entire limb while the rest of the body remained awake. I remember lying on the table thinking to myself “whoa, this must be what Grandpa Stone feels like having no arm!”
Another scar tells the tale of an intoxicated spill in college when I cut my foot. Still others bear witness to aggressive and unbridled play in elementary school. One special tiny scar…….yes, Troy Anderson, it is still visible to the naked eye……is on the inside of a knee. My neighbor thought it would be fun to see if I wanted to see a match “burn twice”. I was extremely gullible and never saw it coming until he placed the lit match on my skin. Yes, I can honestly say I have seen a match burn twice.
Think about your own body and the many scars that dot the canvass of skin you call a house. All of them hold a tale, some lost in time and others waiting in the recesses of memory to be brought forth at just the right story telling moment.
My thigh scar is a story that leaves me smiling and shaking my head at the same time. I received that scar at the hands of a fellow four year old after she broke a glass beer bottle and cut me.
To set the stage, I must first tell you about my best friend in the entire world during those few months sometime around 1974. We lived in an apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri, in a not-so-nice part of town. With little to no supervision, my new friend quickly took me under her wing and where she went I followed. I don’t recall her name, although she clearly needs one if the story is going to flow. I often think of her as Aziza, the name of a little girl I knew while working at a group home right out of college. Both girls were angry and both girls had no control over the chaos their parents placed upon them.
Aziza was scared of absolutely nothing. The first time I followed her into trouble involved mud. We were both hungry and, as was the norm, had been sent outside to entertain ourselves. Aziza found a plastic bowl lying in the ditch and quickly showed me how to create a mud pie. Now, it didn’t sound good to me but I thought this girl was the smartest person I’d ever met. We both mixed and stirred and then promptly shoved mud into our mouths. My bath that night was rough and I vowed never to eat mud again. Besides, it didn’t come close to assuaging the hunger and it tasted, as you can guess, quite horrid.
The next time Aziza led me down the path of sin was a little more serious. In our apartment complex, there was a basement lined with planked wooden storage closets. Residents could see their possessions and store them with the assurance that each gate was secured with a pad-lock. Aziza had discovered one such storage area with the door hanging slightly open, no pad-lock in sight. We were thrilled when we found a box of Christmas decorations, including a miniature Christmas tree, miniature Santa and Sleigh, and miniature wrapped Christmas gifts. Aziza convinced me that every single one of those small, shiny packages must have a real gift inside.
We drug the box outside and began methodically going through it on the sidewalk in front of the apartment entrance. We carefully opened every single one of those miniature packages, but ended up bathed in disappointment when not a single one bore fruit. Chaos erupted later, when the owner pulled up and recognized her items. Then I felt a flick on my ear, which was my mother’s favorite way to garner the attention of her children. She had three inch nails and would flick the top part of our ears when annoyed. It hurt like hell, leaving the cartilage stinging for hours after the attack (at least if felt like hours in my young mind).
My time with Aziza was never supervised or reduced, even after our first criminal offense was discovered, and we continued our friendship with her leading the way and me following blindly. One day, bored and stuck outside again with nothing to do, she asked me if I wanted some candy. The answer is obvious. Aziza told me her mom had candy hiding on top of their refrigerator. Since no one was home, we boldly marched into the apartment and Aziza shimmied up the counter, standing on tip-toe to reach on top of the fridge. She jumped down and was holding a flat, round, plastic container.
I followed her outside and we sat down on the steps to divvy up the loot. “Watch,” she said, “I just have to push them out the back!” Aziza pushed the little pink pieces of candy through a foil backing and they plopped into her tiny hand. After she had pushed out all thirty-one pieces of candy, she ate sixteen of them and I ate fifteen. They were the worst candy I’d ever eaten, but I wasn’t about to tell Aziza that. Typical of our luck, her mom walked up the steps right around that time and started screaming at her. It was glaringly apparent that this was not Aziza’s first offense with the packaged candy.
What happened next? I recall sitting in a cold hospital room, shivering, while a nurse held a small container under my chin. I vomited and vomited, until I didn’t think I could vomit any more while tears rolled down my face. I’ve never been able to puke without crying at the same time. Years later, I would naively ask my Grandmother if I would ever be able to have children again or if those birth control pills we’d taken for candy could have damaged me forever. She laughed and assured me my female parts would be just fine.
The eventual finale to my association with little Aziza was quite dramatic, even though it wasn’t preceded by any type of fight or squabble. I think boredom must’ve been the culprit and, quite possibly, something she had either seen in person or on television. Regardless, we found ourselves sitting on the front steps of the apartment entrance one final time. With no warning, Aziza walked over to the grass and picked up an empty glass beer bottle that was lying innocently on the ground. I watched her carefully. She didn’t look at me.
Aziza raised the bottle and brought it crashing down onto the steps. The bottom part broke off, just like you see in movies. Here is where the comparison ends, though. She didn’t swing it around. She didn’t tell me she was going to cut me. She simply walked up the steps next to me, bent down, and swiped the jagged edge of the bottle along the side of my small thigh. Then, she kept walking and disappeared into the building.
I sat there for a moment, wondering why she was going inside, when I felt something warm flowing down the side of my leg. It didn’t hurt, you see, until I glanced down and saw the deep crimson of blood gushing out. In the span of seconds, I felt a sting and a burn. It was then that I realized it was my own blood and I screamed.
We returned to the hospital where I received stitches and a shot to ward off infection from the dirty bottle that had cut me. I don’t remember ever seeing Aziza again, although I’m certain we must’ve run into her prior to moving. During that time, we moved quite frequently so I can only imagine how our partnership might have turned out had we lived there for any significant length of time. This is something I try NOT to think about, although I’m certain it would’ve provided ample fodder for a writer.
I’ve hated hospital shots and stitches ever since. In fact, I’ve hated miniature Santa sleighs, getting muddy, birth control pills, and broken glass for as long as I can recall.
I started this tale by mentioning scars. Getting philosophical about it would be very easy and we all know that the scars we carry inside us are far more damaging than those on the outside. I kind of like my broken beer bottle scar, though. You see, on the surface one would imagine that Marlys and Aziza would have ended up young and pregnant, addicted, in prison, or dead. Statistics are often blunt evidence in the face of hope.
As I sit here typing, remembering little Aziza and looking at my scar, I’d like to think that she also made it out and is healthy, happy, and no longer eating mud pies or stealing from neighbors. In fact, I like to imagine that those scars motivated her to make sure her own kids are sneaking real candy from the kitchen instead of birth control pills.
That is, after all, how a good story ends, isn't it?
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