Scar Wars

I've been fighting the urge to write about my nightmare boss or work at all in any specific detail - despite the fact that it's great material, rife with potential, and would probably make for very readable blog posts, I live in fear that I'll get called into the boss's office, where he or she will tell me that they've found my blog and know what I've been saying about them. The boss then proceeds to start striking me with a belt. Or maybe just yells at me, I'm not sure, definitely one of the two. And despite the fact that at the end of the day it actually doesn't really matter what the boss thinks of me - it's just a job, something I'll do in between graduating and something more fulfilling, this job is not my life - being yelled at and shamed isn't fun for me, I've learned. So I'm gonna hold my tongue, for now. Besides, I'm already sure that a character with an eerily similar name to my boss will be an excellent addition to my screenplay.

It's a weird thing - at first when I started writing, I was worried there'd be nothing to write about because my life was so boring and uneventful... now there are events (see: the withering quote above) but I find myself holding back from writing about them. Clearly, there's no way to win -  grass is always greener, yada yada yada.

So today as I stared into the mirror at myself worrying about the wrinkles in my forehead, I took a moment to instead fixate on something else - the scar on my upper lip. I had recently had a conversation with my friend Andrew that went like this:

Andrew: That scar over your lip is actually kind of cool. 

Me: You wanna know how I got this scar? [...] Voldemort. 

I then proceeded to laugh hysterically, both because I had responded with that so immediately (I'M SO CLEVER) but also because I'd always fancied myself as having a bit of a Harry Potter steeze.* My best friend as a child was a wisecracking ginger boy, and with my smarty-pantsness and dark hair, I always thought we were just so Ron and Harry. (Though we all know that, in fact, I was Neville Longbottom. Mwop mwop.) I wanted to get into crazy exciting adventures, though I'm pretty sure the wildest we got was ding-dong-ditching. Anyways, I started thinking about the scars I have on my face. Are there stories worth telling there? I'm not entirely sure, but talking about those will keep me from talking about work. And I like the idea of walking through your scars... I pictured a weathered old biker in a bar going through each and every last one of his over a pint, the stories getting progressively more wild with each tale.

*I got this word from my roommate. We've around each other so much that we've begun using each other's phrases - for example, I now have the word 'steeze' in my personal lexicon, and my roommate now punctuates sentences by going "ALL RIGHT!" and bouncing her shoulders up and down. It's a fair-trade off.

The scar I have on my upper lip - honestly, I can't quite remember how I got it, but I think it was from something boring, like cutting myself shaving. Yet it's fairly pronounced and severe for just being a razor accident... so I'd like to imagine that I have an alternate identity while sleepwalking, or had my memories deleted by enemy spies, or at least got into a bar fight or something. But no matter the scenario, the scar definitely resulted from a really intricate, swash-buckling sword fight. I was mostly winning but my enemy got one good nick in - right on my lip, so I'd never be able to look in a mirror without remembering the battle.* I'm pretty sure about that.

*How ironic for him that I HAVE forgotten the battle, though. A shame, really.

I have another tiny scar on/under my bottom lip that I only noticed while staring in the mirror searching for scars so I could write this. I've literally never seen it before, but it's literally in the shape of a tiny lightning bolt, right out of Harry Potter. Which is awesome. I shall attribute this scar to the same sword fight as the other - he probably got both lips with a single swipe.

I also have two light scratches on my cheek - they're barely deep at all so most of the time they can't be seen - only in certain light or if I find them and point them out would you probably notice at all. It's as if just a couple layers of skin got lazered off or something... so the two scratches and the accompanying divot an inch below them came from when I was five or six... our family had a dog, Smokey, who had been with my father since college. He was in his late teens, which is real freakin' old for a dog. Apparently as a four or five year old I was just trying to play with him, and accidentally gave his tail a tug? And sweet, old Smokey - who never before nor ever after bit anyone - took a chunk out of my face. From what I gather, I probably deserved it, both for the tugging of the tail and also for the frivolous flaunting of my youth in front of a decidedly elderly dog.

I have a tiny scar under my ear, on my neck - I once had a super sexy cyst, and once I confirmed to my immediate relief that it wasn't cancer, made an appointment to have it removed. When the doctor told me the surgery would leave "only a tiny scar [...] it'll be completely cosmetic", I was elated to get to tell everyone I was having cosmetic surgery, cause - come on - that's just funny.*

*While I was under I also had a nose job, an eyebrows lift, full botox, a tummy tuck, abdominal etching, and butt implants. Cause, y'know, I live by the Johnny Tsunami mentality - go big or go home. 

My gnarliest scar of all is underneath my chin - a huge circle with a line coming off it - kind of in the shape of a ladle, or a miniature big dipper.* You might not notice it since it's conveniently tucked away in a place where people normally can't see, and even then sometimes it doesn't stand out - except if I have stubble, in which case there's just a giant patch missing.** When I was six or so, I opened the closet door of the guest bedroom - a room that would later become my sister's once she went and got born. The door smacked me as it opened, but it didn't hurt anymore that bumping your elbow or something - seconds later I'd forgotten. After hanging out in the guest room for a little bit - it had a TV, you see - I went into the bathroom. In the mirror, I saw myself covered in red paint. "That's weird", I thought. Then it clicked - it was blood, everywhere - coming down from my chin and all over my shirt. Then suddenly - THROBBING PAIN. PAIN, PAIN, PAIN. It was like my brain fell asleep at the wheel, saw that I was bleeding at the same time as I did, and then was like, "crap, hit the pain switch! Crank it up to ten!" And then I began screaming.

*A regular sized dipper?
**I'm going to go ahead and pretend this is a 'look'.

My parents rushed in - my mom, horrified and in the throes of a stage-ten panic, immediately left to go get Slurpees. People have different ways of dealing with stress, okay. My dad, who is a podiatrist, immediately splayed me out on the countertop, grabbed his med bag, and sewed me up himself, right there in our house. When asked about the scar and the fact that it's so enormous, my dad shrugs, holds his hands up in the air and with a guilty smile and simply says, "I'm not a face doctor!"

The point is, my face is busted. I was joking about the cosmetic surgery before but maybe it's time to invest and fix this puppy up! Frankly, I'm amazed I wrote any of this out at all - I don't know if it ended up being readable in any way but I'm exhausted all the time now from work so LEAVE ME ALONE!

I mean... thank you as always for reading.