Hi, ladiezz!
I am posting this Quezztion of the Week for our Gov'nahzz Eat Sleep Scrap, as she was the first member to answer last week's Quezztion.
Without further delay, Melissa would like us to:
Pick a scar or mark on your body and tell us how you got it.
Sounds like a good one, huh? Dig it!
8 comments:
Hmmmm I have a few to choose from. My c-section scar, my knee scars from 2 surgeries...but probably the funniest (in retrospect) is my forehead scar. Its a tiny 1/2 inch scar. When I was 4 we went up to visit my dad at work. He worked at Sears as a salesman. Back then they had this big candy counter in the middle of the main isle kind of like a candy kiosk which always had my full attention. I was with my mother who was 8 1/2 months pregnant with my 10 lb sister, (kinda looked like she was about to deliver triplets at any second)..and we were also with her sister, my squimish aunt Cheryl. Well mom gave in to my whining and purchased a bag of snowflake chocolates. These were like quarter size and they put them in a paper bag. To my utter amazement, my mom actually let me hold the bag. As we walked through the parking lot, back to our car, i had the bag of chocolates held tight between my chest and both arms which formed an "x". You would have thought I had gold in that bag the way I held it! Anywho.. a clutzy child (and adult) I tripped. Normal children would instinctively throw their arms forward to catch themselves, but not THIS chocolate lover! I would not let go of the bag of chocolate gold and kept it firmly held to my heart. With what my mom says was a very loud clunk i fell face first onto the pavement. When I lifted my head, my face was all ready covered in blood. My aunt started backing away from me screaming something about plastic surgery, while my mom was scraming at her to not leave her and to grab a towel. Luckily my aunt had a beach towel in her trunk and my mom applied pressure (as we all know a small head wound can bleed like crazy) as I sat on her lap in the car as my aunt drove to the hospital. When we arrived at the ER door and my mom came in carrying me, a blood soaked beach towel and her covered in blood herself, the attendants ran and got a wheelchair for her thinking she was the wounded or giving birth.
Well, they took me into the er, tied me to a table, covered my eyes as I screamed so loud that my aunt could hear me in the waiting room. It ends up I received a whopping 2 stitches.
I have a scar beside my left eye.
When I was in 3rd grade, my brother brought out a golf club and a big blow up ball thing (almost like a kick ball). He was hitting the ball over the house.. so of course my friend and I wanted to try. Well I hit it pretty good. So, of course my friend had to try. Well, when she hit it.. she was a crazy swinger. I was standing far enough away from her.. but somehow that golf club (that she swung like a baseball bat) came flying out of her hands and hit me right next to my eye.
My mom, in her frantic state, yelled for my dad to call 911.. being a nurse she was fearing the worste (that it hit my temperal artery). So i come running from the back yard up to the house with blood pouring out all over me. We put a towel on it and realize it didnt hit the artery and we could make it to the hospital ourselves. Well, we get there and they make me wait over an hour! uhm.. hello! is this thing on? I'm bleeding out of my head here!
So I ended up with 7 stitches, but luckily had the doctor who had taken a few extra courses and was considered a plastic surgeon.. so my scar isn't bad at all. You wouldn't notice it in person unless I pointed it out. (however, i can take a close-up picture if you'd all like to see lol)
OMG so fun to read Christy's & Jess' responses!
OK to keep this lighthearted, I'm gonna shift from scars & talk about my one tattoo. 1st off, if I went w/ my 1st tat impulse, it would've been to get a masquerade mask on my lower back/upper butt when I was 17! I would've lived w/ it if that was the choice I made but I'm soo glad I didn't.
Fast forward: I had gone through a kind of funk during my sr. yr. of college because I had fallen out of love w/ what I thought I wanted to do in life. I had acted & performed in & outside of school since age 8, but during college, I just lost the passion for it. I was really bummed. But about a yr after college grad, I fulfilled a dream I had to learn to play bass; it was wonderful to be passionate about something again! I started thinking about getting a tat as a present to myself on my 23rd birthday. I knew I wanted some kind of cosmic, female empowerment sort of image. I remembered a photo my friend took of a woman w/ long flowing hair, she was perched on top of an exercise ball or something, it looked like the Earth, laying on her back so her hair fell downwards on the ball. My friend turned the photo upside so the ball was on top of her & it looked like her hair was defying gravity. But though it looked cool that her hair was floating upwards, symbolism-wise I didn't want the world on top of her, I wanted her on top of the world! So I chose that image & turned it back right side up.
I went to Rising Dragon Graphics in NYC because a girl from college (who was also learning bass later in life) had just gotten a cool tiger tat from Darren there. My appointment was at midnight (I forgot why, I think that was the only time my friend Steph could go w/ me!). Before I went, my then-roomie Jeff & I had planned that I would bring the photo & something that was the size of what I wanted it to be; I chose a bicycle reflector, you know, about 3" in diameter. But when Darren sketched it out, he did it bigger, like a roll of masking tape, & I so loved it! So I told him I wanted it that big. It took about an hour, w/ the 1st 10 mins. being the most "funky" feeling (not painful, just...awkwardly tickly) due to the darker outlining. I love it & I still love it! I totally wanted a 2nd one right away & even figured out what it would be...a bunch of elongated people dancing to the moon & stars around my ankle. I never got that 2nd one but I'm kind of grateful, don't know if that design would entirely be "me" these days.
Fast forward again...DH & I took a trip for our 1st anniversary a few yrs ago, to a bed & breakfast; we talked about getting the same tattoo, not our names but the same, or coordinating, symbols or an initial. I was so down for it. Now he doesn't remember saying that at all! Hahaha....
I forgot to say, my tattoo is over my left shoulder blade. :o) I had a friend who was an amateur photographer take great photos of it several yrs ago but now the friend is MIA. I should really get more pics of it & scrap it sometime, as I kept the photo that inspired it.
I have a scar on my left eyebrow-right in the middle. I got it when I was 4. We went to visit my grand parents. They have like 10 steps to get to the entry door. So my mom was talking to someone and I start jumping up the steps. Then down and up again and then down. Well it was time to jump up again, but I tripped on the 3-4 step and I fell and since I can ever get my hands to spot me from hitting the ground with my face, I hit my head. It started to bleed. Mom took me to the hospital where I got few stitches.
This one scar is the only one you can notice when you see me. Other then that I have few on my hands-one from a broken glass-while I was washing the dishes, one from a desk slammed on my finger-few stitches there, and one on my thumb from a bottle cap. That's about it.
So sorry to hear about all of the childhood accidents, getting stitches at any age is tough. I remember I got a laugh when I saw a scrapbook page of a baby getting stitches with the title, First ER Visit, like it was a given they would be back. But I digress.
I have a scar AND a tattoo story. Buckle-in cause this is gonna be long ride.
About a billion years ago, when dinosaurs roomed the planet… ok maybe not that long ago. But think back to the 70s as in real time not the TV show. Disco fever was the rage and I, Gelidy Gelato, was a young college student, in Florida, on spring break. You might have seen the video sold only on TV “Gelidy Gone Wild”. After transporting a perfect stranger’s car (did you know you can actually deliver other people’s cars and get paid for it?) a college friend and I found ourselves in Florida with NO car, NO money, and NO place to stay (all different stories, too detailed to go into now). Somehow we met up with some guys who let us stay at their house. Ever notice when old folks talk about their youth it always starts with something like “I am not exactly sure how it happened…” or “I don’t remember the exact details BUT…”. This is probably due a) we have no memory cells left, b) drug use, both back then and now, c) divine intervention, which actually kept us alive at time.
So there I was in a strange house, in Florida, wandering by an open bedroom door. I glanced in and saw an iron on the bed. Not that unusual but strangely this image hit me right between the eyes. It was one of those premonition moments. We all have them… somehow we know that glass will fall off the table, will see a new house, it makes an impression and a week later we drive up to a party there, or we spot a certain type of car, shrug it off only to have a new boyfriend drive up in that exact model. Whatever it is called, a premonition, deja vu, esp, we know it is happening but good luck figuring out what it all means. So there I was looking at this iron and it registers “Earth to Gelidy, Iron on bed”. I answer back “OK, Earth I see the iron, big deal” and go back to doing whatever it is college kids do. Later that night as we are getting ready to go out I leaned on the bed to grab a phone. And BAM! this HOT iron rolls onto my arm. YOWEY I scream. Because all of my weight is on my arm holding me off the bed it takes me more then a few seconds to react and I get burned. Strangely the skin scars into the shape of a perfect star. So to somehow prompt myself to always pay attention to these premonitions, I tattooed a star over the scar.
So now does it help me figure out premonitions…heck no. Like the recent one I had for harlequin patterns. Why do harlequin patterns seem so familiar? No clue. Was I a harlequin in a previous life? “Earth if you can hear me, you got some 'splaining to do”.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading all your stories and couldn't help but laugh at how all of you got your battle scars. I have a few myself and the stories behind them are either ones I'd rather leave in the past or are just not nearly as interesting as yours.
I will share a story behind one, however, because it's more informative than anything and may help someone in the future. I had one mole on each of the backs of my upper thighs, sorta like mirror images of each other. (I think my mother may have noticed and commented on them once, making me feel both odd and unique.)
Anyway, during a routine visit to the gyno, she--for some reason--asked me to turn around so that she could take a look at the backs of my thighs. (Stop me if you've heard of this before, because it was news to me.) She noted the moles and that the right one was comparably darker and misshapen, so she wanted to perform a biopsy right then and there under a local anesthetic. She further explained that skin cancer among women commonly appears in the form of moles on the backs of thighs, and she wanted to be safe.
I got stitched up and sent home where I agonized for a week and strategized on how I'd cope with cancer. Long story short, it wasn't cancer, but it was a scary few days. Now, I get paranoid over any moles I think weren't there before, or moles on my schrubby that look like they've grown or have become misshapen. And, if I ever catch a glimpse of the scar in a mirror, I feel like my existing mole lost its twin.
Moral of the story: Keep track of your moles, and if you're uncertain, check with your doctor.
Ok, July 11th 1980. I remember because it was THE day of my dad and stepmom's wedding.
After the wedding, I went home to my mom's house. My mom was having a really hard time with my dad remarrying, so it was an odd afternoon anyway. My mom and my sister, Kindyl, left to go to the story and told me to stay at my friend Wendy's for a bit.
We were playing in her front yard and decided to mimic some of the things we had seen on the summer olympics. I can't remember the conversation, but one of us marveled about the javelin throw.
Wendy took the white fiberglass pole, with the blaze orange flag, out of her bike. She proceeded to throw it directly towards me in a "javelin" fashion. Let's just say that Wendy had A.) quite the arm and B.) quite the aim.
The metal end of the pole zoomed straight into my left eye socket.
Blood. Gore. Meaty nastiness ensued.
Wendy was afraid that she would get in trouble so she ran from her yard towards my house. Ummmm, remember, no one is home. So, she proceeded to run across the cove to a neighbor's house, who called 911. I just ran behind her screaming gushing blood, literally feeling as though my eye was coming out.
As the ambulances arrived, my mom and sister pull back up. Yadda, yadda, yadda. My mom refused to let the ambulance take me because she didn't want to pay for the service.
So, she drove me up to Memphis (about a half hour drive) to the closest emergency room.
Believe it or not my eyeball was fine. My eyelid was toast. It took 32 stitches and 3 reconstructive plastic surgeries to repair.
You can only see the scar now, when I am wearing no eye makeup. It only looks slightly redder and the skin is a little more pinched there. When I am really tired, my left eye gets very, very heavy and will droop a bit. It is from the reconstruct of the muscles on the eyelid.
I, too, will snap a pic to share.
Oh yeah, back to the whole daddy and stepmom wedding thing. This led to much more resentment between my mom and daddy because she couldn't get ahold of him to tell him about the incident. They had gone on a secret getaway honeymoon and didn't check in for two days.
Good times. :D
Post a Comment