self portrait challenge ~ "imperfection" ~ week one

glass scar, canon digital rebel xt

Do you remember me mentioning a while back that I've had a few near death experiences? Well, this was one of them.

Believe it or not, I received this war wound by playing karate with a few friends and jumping through a thick sliding glass door that I thought was open. You know all those comical scenes in films where we see someone trying to go through a glass door as their faces smush up and they fall backwards? Yah well, that was me but oh so much worse.

I was 13 years old and it was the Summer before my first year of high school. My two friends and I were inside the house jumping around imitating the Karate Kid after seeing the film. The last thing I remember was saying..."Hiiiyyaaa!" with a karate chop motion and leaping towards what I thought was the backyard but in actuality was into a huge wall of thick glass. I first felt my head throbbing from the blow and then it felt as though an enormous gush of hot water spilled over my leg. My guy friend screamed for my other friend to grab a towel and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a pool of my own blood on their kitchen floor. My guy friend was looking over me while the paramedics were fiddling with my leg, taking my blood pressure and such. I asked him if I cut my leg bad and he put up two fingers about an inch apart and said..."only this much". I felt relieved and then drifted again into black nothingness with muffled sounds in my ears.

I woke up in the emergency room right after the nurse had left me to get the doctor. I dared myself to glance down at my leg and I gasped. An inch long? I think not. It looked like a shark took a huge chunk out of my thigh and then nibbled on other bits here and there up and down both of my legs.

The doctors told me my friends instinct to grab the towel saved my life. He had wrapped it tight above my gaping wound to stop the bleeding. I thanked him a million times the next four years of our lives while going to school together. I think his natural instincts inspired him to become a Fireman much later in life.

I am sharing this story because there is a miracle involved. When my parents insurance company went to the house to investigate the scene, they saw a hole where my head hit and two holes where my legs went through high up off the ground. They said, with the way the glass was built, I should have gone completely through and if I did, the top of my head would have been severed from the thick jagged glass that was hanging from the hole. They also didn't understand the two holes below. It looked as though someone lifted me up, gently pushed me thru, pulled me back in and stood me up on the ground. If my legs went through the holes naturally...wouldn't I have fell down on the ground back first? I had many cuts throughout my legs to prove they did indeed go all the way through. None of us that were at the scene recall anything but me hitting the glass quickly and holding onto my head. So, when the insurance agent came to my house to assess my wound, he told me I was saved by an angel and admitted it was rare for him to say so because he wasn't a religious man.

My scar ended up being 4 inches long and 1.5 inches thick. It is on my inner right thigh. It is quite bumpy and lumpy and makes the inside of my leg look a bit deformed.

I received a nice sum of money from the insurance to put towards plastic surgery if I wanted it. I ended up saving the money to purchase my first car a few years later when I could drive. I suppose that means I wasn't very vain. ; )

I was never ashamed of my big scar because the story itself made me feel special. Since then, I have always been intrigued by scars and the stories from which they came.

Discover more imperfections here.