Sanity, mostly.

Heh. My mother would agree with you after having both grandsons (one 3) at the house...even with their dad there. She'll cope next summer.

That's kind of inspiring, sara.

I have additional thoughts but they are not co-operating with my efforts to wrangle them into sentences that make sense. Brain has gone to sleep, body soon to follow.

Okay, this is going back a million years, and is mostly still a reaction to Gudanov "Natter 65: Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft" May 2, 2010 8:01:11 pm PDT where Gud says he only has four scars. 8 years ago, I posted this:

Entry Word: scar Function: verb Text: to mark with a scar <burns that had scarred her face> Synonyms cicatrize, scarify
Related Word cut, score, scratch; blemish, disfigure, flaw, mar; damage, deface

Main Entry: scar tissue Function: noun Date: 1875 : the connective tissue forming a scar and composed chiefly of fibroblasts in recent scars and largely of dense collagenous fibers in old scars

I don't understand the Neosporin ads. Sure, I get the antibiotic use, but are scars that scary that they can sell it on cosmetic grounds? My scars are a map to my memories. Places and people are attached to the events. Post it notes, scribblies of my life, written on my skin. They happen. And with me, they stay.

If I start from the top, I start at the beginning. Tip of the forehead, edge of the forceps, and welcome to the world, young lady. Family rumour has it that my mother refused to pay the hospital bill. Thirty-six hours of labour, and still on the lookout for a bargain. I think my sister was half price.

I never had a shot at undamaged. Start as you mean to continue, and all that.

I have a fascination with forehead scars. My sister was similarly marked, on a similar schedule. Daniel's was a tooth, embedded during a football match. He gets points for sheer grossness, and for pathos -- everyone was paying attention to the kid with the broken tooth. And Ron, Ron -- glass table, I think. At least my sister and I don't have to remember them.

I travel down my face, to the scars I've wanted but never had. You remember those pirates of childhood fancy, or those soap opera crazies? One of those scars, rakishly running over the eye socket, but in my (imagination's) case leaving my eye miraculously untouched. Or maybe something more understated -- slicing the eyebrow. Like Molly's. Except without the getting-hit-by-a-car bit.

Back a bit, to the ears. Here we find the first evidence of self-mutilation. But I didn't start it without prompting. The first holes, one closed hole on each lobe, were put there by my mother. I rejected all things femme (shortly after discovering how much work it was to change earrings) at around age 10. But that had already given me 6 or so good years of earring wearing - I don't think my sister was speaking yet when our mother took us in for piercing.

I rejoined the wonderful world of "real" earrings in high school. By the time I left England, I think there were three holes. Two more in Canada, and then two more in Michigan - tracing up from the lobe of my left ear to the cartilage.

My examination doesn't reach another scar until my chin. And it's a bonanza under there.

I don't know which is which, so I'll move chronologically. I was no more than four. He was my best friend. Throw in a brick fireplace, a wooden wheeled giraffe, and me needing to impress the other gender with feats of physical prowess, and there you have it. Me, a toddler, being rushed to the nearest emergency room to have 6 stitches put in. I don't know if it worked. To impress him, I mean. It must have, a little. Since I still seem to think it's a valid methodology. Wait ... no ... still single. Hrrm.

Parallel to that scar run another six stitches. Product of the curved lip of the Senior Common Room swimming pool, and a goofing little sister. I was 8 or 9, old enough to remember adult reaction this time. My mother, swooping me up from where I'd fallen, blood mixing with chlorinated water, and rushing me across campus to the hospital.

The rumours about my injury arrived at school before I did. I think I disappointed them, unable to spin a mesmerizing tale of injury, pain or bravery. It was mostly like the first time -- my memory doesn't distinguish between the (continued...)

( continues...) Ottawa doctors looking down at me, and the Jamaican doctors.

Moving down, I reach my shoulders. The scar on my right is small and raised -- tuberculosis vaccination. I remember the line, up the stairs and into the nurse's office. I remember the doctor, and I remember the flame they used to clean the needle. I don't remember any pain. Not until London, anyway, where my new school didn't believe in Jamaican medicine. Oh, I told them I was good, but they went from viewing me as a potential victim to branding me Typhoid Mary when they saw the vigour with which my body reacted to the tests. Don't mess with us.

The left shoulder has a bigger scar. Smallpox? Polio? It predates my medical memory. I wear it like a badge. My parents have this scar too. It's a brand of the West Indies. I remember my father's the most clearly. His scars fascinated me. This vaccination, and a larger one on his thigh were shiny and striated -- like polished wood. I wondered if my scars would ever be that pretty, but genetics never tipped my skin over from butterscotch to his cocoa.

My elbows are second only to my knees as random scar magnets. Less interesting also, because you don't get to watch. On my right elbow, where I'm no longer flexible enough to see, is the mark of January 3rd, the day before my birthday. I wanted to watch The Man From Atlantis, and wasn't being allowed to. So I acted out a little, swinging in the dining room. One hand on the back of the chair, and my right hand on the buffet table. The elbow gave, and came smashing down on the corner of the table. I still didn't get to watch TV.

On the back of my left hand is a scar combination that looks like shorthand, or the katakana symbol for "so". The long dash is an old scar. I've reconstructed a memory around this, since I'm sure I don't actually remember being in diapers. Or coming out to dance, and swinging my hand past an open nappy pin. I mean, me, as a child, dancing? Not many memories of that at all. The smaller dash is an IV scar, from my first general anaesthetic. I suppose if I hadn't wriggled and thrashed enough for them to have to strap my wrist flat to a board, there'd be no scar there.

Staying on the left hand, back of, there's a small curving scar near the tip of my middle finger. Another favourite - first blood drawn by my first Henckel knife.

The scar on my thumb is from a Cutco knife. My Henckel wouldn't have skipped like that. Damn, that bled. But none got into the pork chop I was stuffing, and dinner wasn't ruined. Shame that night's Buffy episode wasn't better. I'd hoped to make a convert of P. Whose scars shame mine.

Flipping my hand over, we have two very close together - a faint remnant of me spearing myself with a rusty geometry compass (I lied to the teacher about that. I was terribly embarrassed to have done it. And it meant I was not paying attention in class). A blue dot at the base of my index finger. A little further down, at the tip of my heart line, is the proof that Sarah K. needs to keep her toenails trimmed. I could have caught something nasty from blocking that kick.

September 1993. I'm in the bathroom at work, adjusting my clothes before going back outside. My bra isn't fitting right. I tweak, and I tweak, and still my right breast just doesn't look right. Friendly palpation from relatives, a mammogram and much shock later, I'm diagnosed with a benign cyst. And not a small one.

I'm conscious for the entire procedure. The doctor, a marvellous man (along with the rest of his staff, he performed the procedure for free, a favour for my cousin's husband, and for me, new to the US with no medical insurance). As he works, he talks to me. Small talk, and also descriptions of how he's slicing my nipple almost all the way off. Would I like to see the cyst? Wow. Huge. Size of a quarter. Wait … what's that warmth at my back? Blood pooling, huh? And the smoke? Oh, that's what I smell like when I'm on fire. I suppose that noise is the fancy schmancy staple gun, huh? Yeah, thought (continued...)

( continues...) so.

He told me about the drainage tube, but it took seeing it in the mirror for it to sink in. Man, they'd cut up my breast and left me with metal and rubber in it.

It hurt for a long time, physically and psychically, which led to my second nipple scar - the piercing. My nipple, my pain, my terms.

It was a family outing - cousin S, her mother and I went out Thanksgiving of 97. I came home with a breast that hurt because I wanted it to. S came back with a pierced nose, and her mother a pierced navel.

I kept the piercing in for a year. It was … interesting. And then I was done. Breast reclaimed.

Moving further downwards, we hit two failed navel piercings. I don't want to talk about them. I'm still bitter.

University of Reading, I think. 1986? 1985? My stomach hurts the whole time we're there, having the marvels of physics presented to us. A low-grade nasty ache. My mother doesn't want to hear about it when I get home. She gives me ginger tea, and sends me to bed. It doesn't work. I think we only went to the hospital the next day so she didn't have to hear me whine anymore.

The doctors weren't sure, my mother was sceptical, but I knew. Appendicitis, idiots! No, you can take the glove off, just take out the appendix, no need to stick your finger, ow! They did, and better late than never, agreed with my diagnosis. Hmmph.

The pain afterwards was worse than the pain before, and made me grouchy. Grouchy enough to leave the hospital on my own, not filling my antibiotics prescription (uncharacteristically sloppy of my mother not to ask, but I confessed the truth to her over 10 years later), and just catching a cab. They'd gotten Teletext while I was in hospital.

I liked this scar a lot. 6 stitches (again), two inches long. I bought my first bikini, just so I could show it off.

The road rash from the awkward slide I did on the gravel of the netball court, trying to round the corner of the 6th form common room, heading late to chemistry only shows in the right light. It's pretty easy to keep the right light off your ass.

More absent scars, on my left thigh. In 1981, or thereabouts I embarked on a search for acupuncture points. My mother was furious. Mostly about the potential sanitary hazards, I think. But the needle was clean enough to not scar. So there.

Knees, knees, knees. Scars on my knees, like schmutz on a toddler at dinnertime. There are the generic knee scraping scars.

Either my knowledge of geography has gotten better, or growing 2 feet taller has reshaped the one I called Australia. I'm proud of these scars, because I nursed them along. The cuts were my little petrie dishes, and the bathroom my list of ingredients. I packed everything into them - talcum powder, soap, toothpaste.

Less generically, we have another 6-stitch outing. This one is earlier than my memory - a tale of broken glass in the hands of an unattended toddler. It's a big one. I guess they couldn't get me to stay still while it healed. Don't know why not - someone should have just given me a book. But it did give me something to play with. From the right angle, it looks like an eye, and I would pretend my leg was an elephant, my shin and foot the trunk. Not a very mobile elephant, on reflection.

They reassured me that arthroscopic surgery wouldn't scar much. And now that I've seen traditional knee surgery scars on others, I'm glad of it. Just three small and soft raised scars. Which fail to convey the amount of pain I woke up in, and the pain that continued, the tears shed at fruitless rehabilitation sessions, the pain of thinking I'd never be able to go back to what I loved. Which is a blessing, since one good physical therapist made that all go away.

I cut my ankle taking out the trash. Broken glass sliced through plastic, and through stockings, and bled all over my workplace. Because I didn't take the time to go back up to my apartment and bandage it properly. Dedication to the job, what, what. Hrrmph. This cut was fun, because some unidentified white (continued...)

( continues...) stuff peeked out.

There's a scar along my instep whose roots no one can place. This disturbs me.

My nemesis is on the base of my foot. It started simply enough, with a needle. Unlike the exploratory work on my leg, this was a mistake. I'd been hunting for it, and stepped on it instead. For someone who works around hospitals, my mother sure doesn't like them much. She took way too much time to yell at me for being messy. The needle wasn't hurting exactly, but it felt like it was lying beside a nerve, and that's a very disquieting feeling.

Long after the surgery (it's been over 15 years now), I can still feel the scar. At first it was just during bad periods. Now, it's the harbinger that tells me I'm low on anti-seizure meds. The tingling starts there, and moves up my leg, getting more and more grim, until it reaches my knee, where it settles in and changes its name to pain.

I can feel its full length all the time. Just thinking about it sends a flutter up and down the (6 stitch) scar.

Sensation is what tells me I am alive. Scars are what tell me that I have lived.

Wow. tl;dr. And it doesn't include the messes I've made in the past 8 years, most notably to my face.

May I suggest your new superhero name: Sister Cicatrix!

Wow. I loved that. You should preserve as an essay.