Road Map of Owwies

 

Burns. Scars. Bruises. Pains. Heartaches. Fears. All kinds of hurts, from all kinds of experiences. As you grow older, they begin to pile up on you, and you get to where your body and mind tell their own stories. This scar is from the flesh-eating fungal infection I got on my arm six years ago. That burn is from my teen years when I wasn’t good at dealing with my problems in healthy ways. This scar is from my carpal tunnel release surgery; that one is from all the time I spent in the hospital with IVs in my arm during and after my brain surgery episode. Oh, that reminds me of my best scar…

I’m getting to that point in my life where the scars help me remember my stories. Without them, some things I’ve experienced would probably start to fade in my memory. I don’t think my scars are ugly… they’re just part of my story. And I have a lot of them, inside and out. They all play a part in shaping me, one way or another. The two diagonal slash marks on my left middle finger are from slicing my finger while trying to help my mom cut potatoes when I was just five; that is probably my oldest scar. The funniest one is probably the one on my shoulder where I accidentally buried a luer during a bad cast while fishing one day. My most recent? Hard to say; perhaps the deep burn on my right palm, from a cigarette lighter. Or the internal scar that led to it…

So many women obsess about scars, about covering them, about how unsightly they are. Me, I don’t have any problem with my scars. They help me remember what makes me, ME. I’m okay with that. The good and the bad, the ups and the downs, it’s all there.

(In between all the tattoos, of course.)

Oh, the innocence of childhood…

Do you remember all the crazy things you misunderstood as a kid, the stuff you tried to apply kid logic to and it just didn’t work out?
Sometimes my kids reminds me of those kinder, gentler times.
Once, during a commercial for ‘Dirty jobs’, someone was talkinig about being a ‘bird waste remover’. My then 14 year old daughter (yes, BLONDE) looked at me and said “so, if you remove a birds’ waist, it won’t poop anymore?”
I’m thinking her college fund will go a long way towards a cruise through the bahamas.
When I was a kid, there were three movie ratings: G, PG, and R. I was probably twelve before I knew they stood for something besides Good, Pretty Good, and Rotten.
I’ll never forget the first time I convinced my mom to buy Imperial margarine; I waited till I was alone in the house, took out a Ritz cracker, spread some Imperial on it, my heart pounding the whole time – then I went to the hall mirror, and with a big shit-eating grin on my eight year old face, I took a bite.

Nothing happened.

I was so disillusioned, I thought we had defective margarine. How dare they lead kids to believe a magical experience awaited, only to find out it was just another hydrogenated vegetable oil product? My Parkay didn’t talk to me, either. What the hell?? No Chuck Wagon came tearing out of my dog food bag, there were no elves or leprechauns in my cereal. And damn if I missed those poor scrubbing bubbles every time they went down the drain, my mom could never figure out why I cried every time she cleaned the bathroom.

No wonder I was such an angry, frustrated little child. I was perpetually disillusioned.
But, on the bright side… it sure prepared me for adulthood.

He’s a Nutjob… but it’ll make a great book someday

My stepfather is an interesting man. By interesting, I mean he’s a total freakshow. My mom and dad divorced when I was very young, around 3 years old, and they both remarried almost immediately. My dad married a lovely woman of intelligence and poise, and my mom married… well… HIM.
HE, spent his career as an environmental scientist in the field of solid and hazardous waste. You have no idea how many jokes started that way. We used to say that he must have used his whole brain at work, because by the time he got home at night, it seemed he had not an ounce of common sense left. Over the years, there were so many ridiculously comical incidents in our home, I’ve joked that the eventual book royalties will almost make up for my traumatic childhood.
Here are a few of the chapter titles:

1. The First Time He Fired a Gun Inside the House

2. What Happens When You Light Yourself on Fire

3. Dog Fights Should Be Left to the Dogs

4. The Second Time He Fired a Gun Inside the House

5. That’s Not Your Wallet, You Have a Dead Mouse in your Underwear

6. Never Sit on a Railroad Spike when you’re Wearing a Breechcloth

7. “I Promise, This Time It’s Not Loaded” -or- The Third Time he Fired a Gun in the House

8. Please Don’t Tell My Stepdaughter I Almost Shot Her Husband (I Didn’t Think It Was Loaded)

9. Never Pee in your Best Friends’ Hat

10. Never, EVER Drink Bleach Just Because it’s Sitting in a Glass by the Sink

11. Never Stand Sideways on a Cattleguard

12. (My personal favorite) Never Knock Yourself Unconscious by the Side of the Road Next To Your Campaign Poster when you’re Running for Public Office

People, I could go on. And on. But I really wanted this to be more of a coffee table book, not a novel.
My stepdad is retired now; he has been for about thirteen years. It gives him a lot of spare time to do stupid things. The most recent was the cattleguard incident; he turned sideways on the cattleguard to talk to my eternally annoyed mother who was sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck, and boom! both feet slipped between the grates and his big beefy calves became horribly lodged, and of course, immediatley began to swell. My mother quickly tried to swing the door open and jump out of the truck to assist, and succeeded in whacking him soundly in the head with the door. By the time she scooted out of the passenger door and ran around the front of the vehicle, the two of them could not pry his pudgy legs out of the steel slats. It took almost twenty minutes to get him out.

God, I wish I had been there.

Even now, a year and six months later, you can still see the long scarred lines across both his shins where he was stuck. They go nicely with all the other various and sundry souveniers/scars of his previous escapades and misadventures.
Lots of times during my youth, I was frustrated, irritated and impatient with my stepfather. We never saw eye to eye, we argued constantly. As I’ve grown older, I have learned to appreciate my stepdad for the reasons I can find – first and foremost, the fact that he’s always good for a laugh, he will LET me laugh at him, and he can laugh at himself.
If there’s one good thing I’ve learned from him, aside from NEVER EVER ASSUMING A GUN IS UNLOADED EVER EVER EVER… it’s that.