By Shannon Magsam, Ladybug’s mama
One night when we were visiting my husband’s family in Philadelphia, his brother-in-law and I started comparing scars. My husband joked that we reminded him of that scene in Jaws when the characters were showing each other all their old war wounds.
Ours certainly weren’t that bad.
My husband’s brother-in-law, a rough and tumble guy who played and coached all kinds of sports, had lots more scars to share. But I had quite a few and gleefully displayed the visual evidence, making the how-I-got-my-scars stories as dramatic and gory as possible.
Well, I didn’t show him ONE of my scars: the jagged C-section that runs low across my abdomen.
At the time, it didn’t exist. (If it had, I totally could have trumped his old football scars. “And then they took my internal organs out, and had them lying on the table next to me!”)
But I had other old scars. From my bottom lip down to my big toe, I told my brother-in-law about these:
♦ The vertical line on my bottom lip from getting socked in the mouth with a baseball bat from that time in fifth grade when I was standing too close behind home plate.
♦ A mostly-faded gash on my neck from when I fell out of bed as a kid and came in contact with the edge of a trash can that was sitting right next to my sick bed.
♦ A puffy lighter-than-flesh-colored scar on my left palm left by the nasty bite of a fuzzy red ant that I tried to pick up when I was 6.
♦ Both my knees, from the time I careened through a barbed-wire fence on a go-kart with no brakes that was driven by a friend.
♦ On my right foot, an angry white line bisecting the bottom of my big toe from the cut I received after falling off a small bridge across a creek and landing on a broken glass bottle.
♦ Oh, and in the middle, there’s the one that’s more recent: the C-section scar. My OB told me I’d still be able to wear a bikini and I did, once, when I was at a tropical location to attend a wedding. But never here in NWA where I live and play, thankyouverymuch.
Our scars are evidence of a story. Often, lots of stories. The stories of our particular, unique, sometimes difficult, sometimes brave, sometimes daring lives.
We all have them, right? Where are your scars and how did you get them?
Let’s compare!
Shannon Magsam is co-founder of nwaMotherlode.com and nwaMomProm.com. She’s married to an awesome newspaperman and they have a fun-loving, artsy teen (officially!) who loves watching tv with them and drawing cats. If you have a question for Shannon, send it to mamas@nwamotherlode.com or leave a comment here.
This would be an interesting conversation to have with anyone. And I believe scars do show the real character and history of someone. I have a very old scar that is a cut on my wrist from when I was a child and ran straight into a glass door, shattering the door and launching a huge shard into my wrist. As well as a huge gash on my right leg just below my knee from a recent car accident with my mother almost 2 years ago on Father’s Day when a huge truck hit our car because he was in the wrong lane. That one means a lot to me because my mother swerved the car and took most of the accident and damage to save me from getting hurt. Moms are awesome.
I have a large scar that goes the width of my leg just under my knee from falling off the go-cart one summer. I also have a scar on my left hand from where I got my hand stuck in the conveyor belt at Kroger’s when I was young. And the scars I’m most proud of, that same 10cm line on my abdomen from two c-sections.