I am fortunate in that I don't have many scars, but unfortunate in that there is very little to tell about my body beyond what anyone else could say.

Here is the only mark with a story behind it:

(I am not eliminating that terrible red-eye because it is irrelevant to my story.)

See that little darkish bit of skin above my eyebrow? The bit with the red circle around it and the arrow pointing straight to it? Yeah, that's the scar. It looks like a freckle, but it's a little tiny dent in my forehead. Not even really enough to feel, but visible.

I got it from a BART escalator. Anyway, this was years ago; I was very young when it happened, perhaps seven or eight years old. I was running late for school, so my father was rushing me up the escalator so we could make a bus. The stairs were just too big for my small legs, and when I was half-way up the escalator, I tripped and fell directly onto the sharp edges of the escalator stair. Think carefully about the edges of those stairs. They're jagged and sharp. Ouch.

A nice man in a suit helped me up. I can't remember his face, but he had very soft hands. I was bleeding profusely (head wounds will do that to a person) and got blood on his sleeve. He was wearing a white shirt. My blood stood out terribly. At that point, I started crying and apologizing. He was very kind and told me that it was okay, really, he could get a little blood out. My father, who had already reached the top of the elevator, turned around when he heard me start to wail. The man in the suit did not reprimand my father for not paying careful attention to me. I didn't appreciate this tiny fact then, but it now seems important.

At the top of the escalator, my father took me to a nearby shop to grab some napkins and staunch the bleeding. The blood had started to drip into my eye, clouding my vision. We reached the bus stop, although I bumped into a few people along the way. We took the bus to my school. I was late. The bleeding had still not stopped, however, so instead of going to class, I went to the office.

The secretary, Candy, upon inspecting the wound, decided that I would live without stitches, but that I would need a butterfly bandage. I had never before heard of a butterfly bandage, but they sounded lovely. Butterflies, I figured, had nothing not to like about them, unless the bandage was made out of actual butterflies. Candy warned me that it was not just a regular band-aid and that I would not like it. She was right. It was uncomfortable.

I finally got to class and got on with my day, but not without many questioning glances towards and questions about my forehead. Being a second-grader, I told them I had been attacked by a tiger cub on the train to school. Surprisingly, they did not believe me.

I don't think it's much better, but here's another shot of the scar: