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.

Bravery Beyond Measure

In the venn diagram that makes up me, there are many circles. But there two specifically that overlap in a relevant way - relevant to this post, anyhow. The first thing you need to know is that I was a child in the 1990s. This, incidentally, was the prime time to be in elementary school. I was afforded the pleasure of drinking Mondos while eating Dunk-a-Roos, watching Rugrats and Power Rangers*, and perhaps most importantly, enjoying the sweet sound of classic boy bands like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC**. Not only were those harmonies superhuman, but no one had to worry about their child singing along to verging-on-porn lyrics***.

*Until the day I die, a part of me will always want to grow up to be a Power Ranger. 
**Which, by the way - BSB > NSYNC. Yeah, I said it.
***Seriously, how are they going to put "Whistle" on KidzBop? This is a concern I have.

The second, considerably less fun circle is that I was a chubby kid. Yes, it gave me a complex. Does all my self-deprecation make sense now? Have you solved me? But I wouldn't change it; everyone should be chubby for a bit as a child. See, IT MAKES YOU NICER. Nobody should be "good-looking" in elementary or middle school. Our egos will balloon enough as it is, let's not start them at age three - I'm looking at you, Toddlers and Tiaras.

Have you figured it out yet? What happens when these two things overlap? Take it away, diagram:

             The weird part is that I found this diagram pre-made in a Google search.

YES friends, in the late nineties Harry Potter had begun taking over the world, or it had at least reached the states. In short, it was not a good time to be a fat kid.

My best friend was a hilarious ginger boy, and with my dark, dark hair I fancied us Harry and Ron. Oh no, the world assured me, you are Neville Longbottom, the sad fat child wizard. "No, I'm the hero!" I wanted to say, "Can't you see it underneath the chins?"

I cannot tell you how many times - especially in middle school when I was at peak fatness - someone cheerfully told me how I reminded them of Neville. The fact that they were smiling brightly as they delivered this tidbit did little to remedy the fact that hearing that made me feel like I'd been STABBED IN THE FACE. As I'd force a smile and say, "oh... really?", what I would be thinking was, "I know I'm fat, YOU DON'T NEED TO REMIND ME."

But I got older, I thinned out, and this comparison drifted to the back of my mind. Then a year or so back, it became very en vogue to make your Facebook picture that of your celebrity lookalike. It was only then I started compiling the celebrity lookalikes I'd received over time.

In high school, I was in a production of Macbeth; I played Banquo.**** My lovely friend Michelle played Witch Three. When she, at college, was again cast as Witch Three, I went to visit her and see her college version of Macbeth. I met the new Banquo, and joked to him, "I feel like we should duel or something!" New Banquo - who, fun fact, later went on to be a contestant on The Glee Project - told me he thought I looked like (or reminded him of) Kenneth from 30 Rock.

****And I gave us all the phrase "Money in the Banquo".

While I love Jack McBrayer, I found this suspect. It didn't seem accurate. And that's not nearly the weirdest one I've gotten. A friend of my roommate's told me I looked like Napoleon Dynamite. And again here, they told me excitedly*****. My face fell immediately. Devoid of any other thoughts, I actually sputtered to this person I'd just met, "...why would you say that to me?" His face followed mine's suit and fell as well. Consolingly, he mustered some "oh, I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." but I'm pretty sure I just wandered away, my face still etched with horror.

*****It's always excitedly. They're so bloody happy to tell you you're ugly.

                      Do I really look like Napoleon Dynamite? You decide.

But at least Napoleon Dynamite is an actual human being. Some kids I was volunteering with - don't act so surprised, I'M A NICE PERSON, DAMMIT - were throwing around celebrity lookalikes for each other. I offhandedly mentioned I didn't have any lookalikes, and one of the guys goes, "no no, you look like Ratatouille!" Again horrified, I asked, "do you mean I look like Patton Oswalt? Or the animated character??" "No, the animated character. The chef." "Oh, ok, good, yeah" I said, finding that option the less upsetting of the two.******

******Let me state for the record that I find Patton Oswalt to be a wildly talented and hilarious man. It's just for a kid with a fat complex... y'know. It wasn't great to hear.

My two options. Quite an eclectic gang we're gathering, huh?

I tried - unsuccessfully, it would seem, based on this post - to brush that off, and told them how I'd often gotten Neville Longbottom as a child. "But hey!" One girl said, "he's really hot now!" This is an argument my friends make to me often. "Neville ended up really handsome", they say. This may or may not be true, but as I remind them, that's not what any of the people who called me Neville Longbottom were talking about. None of them were saying, "Fat kid, you look like Neville Longbottom, and by that, I mean to say that I have seen into the future, and that fat kid grows up into a slim young man with nice teeth. Oh, and I'm talking about the actor now, not the character. You get all that from what I'm saying, right?"

If I thought anybody meant present-day Neville, we might have a different story.

 
But this wasn't all. I continued lamenting the Neville comparison, turning to another girl and saying, "They told me I looked like Neville Longbottom. So basically it was the equivalent of coming up to me and telling me I was ugly." She - in dead-serious earnestness - said to me:

"But like, he's like really brave."

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Brave indeed, young woman. Brave indeed.