# Story Behind Your Battle Scar



## Lewdog (Dec 17, 2012)

I wanted to start this thread to find the interesting stories behind people's battle scars.  Obviously it doesn't have to be an actual battle scar, but it can be.  I think sometimes are scars and how we recover from them, can say as much about our personalities than anything else.

I have this big dent in my shin that has never healed and never will at this point in my life.  I received that scar while I was in Sophia, Bulgaria, on vacation.  I was out with some friends at a bar where maybe 3 people spoke English and they served the worst beer.  It was fun though.  They had Red Bull YEARS before it came to the U.S.  They also had a kissing contest where two girls won.  Despite how bad the beer was, I drank my fill and on my way back to my hotel room, I smashed my shin into a concrete block that I assume used to be some kind of parking sign.  Its a badge of honor I will have for the rest of my life.  Who needs pictures to remember a night out drinking when you can have a cracked shin!


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## Freakconformist (Dec 17, 2012)

Okay, this is probably the oddest "scar" you're going to hear about. 

I have a small blue dot just over my right knee. It's been there for more than 20 years. How did I get it? Around third or fourth grade I was wandering around in la-la land while the teacher was reading a story for the class. I was drawing on my pants with this mechanical pencil, (the one that I was supposed to have left at my desk) because at that stage I was drawing on everything. So, when the teacher asked me a question to see if I was paying attention, (I wasn't) I was so surprised I stabbed the tip of the pencil straight through my pants and into my knee. Thereby, permanently tattooing myself with a mechanical pencil. I don't even know if that's possible, but it's what I remember.


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## Lewdog (Dec 17, 2012)

Freakconformist said:


> Okay, this is probably the oddest "scar" you're going to hear about.
> 
> I have a small blue dot just over my right knee. It's been there for more than 20 years. How did I get it? Around third or fourth grade I was wandering around in la-la land while the teacher was reading a story for the class. I was drawing on my pants with this mechanical pencil, (the one that I was supposed to have left at my desk) because at that stage I was drawing on everything. So, when the teacher asked me a question to see if I was paying attention, (I wasn't) I was so surprised I stabbed the tip of the pencil straight through my pants and into my knee. Thereby, permanently tattooing myself with a mechanical pencil. I don't even know if that's possible, but it's what I remember.



Did you become an architect?  Ted would be proud if you did.


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## Freakconformist (Dec 17, 2012)

No, but I almost became an artist. Who is Ted?


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## Lewdog (Dec 17, 2012)

Freakconformist said:


> No, but I almost became an artist. Who is Ted?



Ted, from "How I met your mother."  I thought everyone knew Ted?


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## Freakconformist (Dec 17, 2012)

I haven't really watched sitcoms since Seinfeld became popular. Though, I do watch The Big Bang Theory.
 I've seen a couple of episodes of How I Met Your Mother, but didn't really get into it. 
Sorry, I spoiled your reference.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Dec 17, 2012)

I have a 2.5 inch scar on the inside of my left bicep from a tumble I took while rock climbing.  My fractured pelvis was the major injury, but the scars (the aforementioned one and a couple of scrapes on my left wrist and hand) are the only signs that remain from that fall.


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## popsprocket (Dec 18, 2012)

Well the scar healed ridiculously well (being young is great, no?), but my right forearm/hand was pretty scarred from the time I copped the wrong end of an angle grinder. I'm so damn lucky that at the time I was using it with a wire brush and not a cutting disc. In the end it didn't turn out too much worse than really had gravel rash but that was pretty damn painful.

I suppose my only other "scars" are from broken bones. I've broken both my wrists and my right thumb. The thumb is probably the worst of it because I can't write for more than 30 minutes before it begins to ache and it's nowhere near as strong as it used to be. My right wrist is worse than my left because it copped one miniature compound fracture and then another one a few weeks later. Then, the doctor in all her wisdom, decided to respond to my answer of "No, it isn't currently hurting" by grabbing my wrist and flexing it violently. She probably thought I was just trying to be tough but it really wasn't aching or hurting at the time. Either way I can feel strain in the bones about halfway down my forearm when I do anything that requires significant strength.


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## Sam (Dec 18, 2012)

There's a scar on my left arm about an inch long. I got when I was still working in construction. We were on a site with about two foot of topsoil which had to be stripped and piled up until the owner of the firm decided what he wanted to do with it. This went on for about a week, and the pile had grown so big that the digger man levelled it off at the top and made a pad up so the dumper man could drive up and tip the load. 

The next day the guy calls in sick and the foreman tells me to drive the dumper. I was 18 and had been driving tractors for years, but the dumper was older than me and it required an old-fashioned knack because the hand-brake didn't work and the brake pads were nearly done. It was also power-shift, i.e. a lever for forward and back. The guy would drive to the top and keep the dumper in forward while tipping the load. I didn't know any of these things, nor was I told them. On the first load, I drove right to the top no problem. Clicked the lever into neutral. Pulled the hand-brake. And started to tip the load when all of a sudden the dumper began rolling backwards. Before I knew what the heck was going on, I was coming back down the hill faster than I went up it. I tried hitting the brakes -- natural reaction -- but they did nothing. In retrospect I should have slammed the lever into forward. It would have burned the clutch to bits, but I wouldn't have this nasty scar. 

The dumper came off the edge of the soil and tipped over. Such was the speed that it threw me from the seat. Had it not, it probably would have crushed me to death. My arm bore the brunt of the fall. As it happened, I landed right on top of the pile of rocks the digger man had been side-casting from the topsoil. One of them split my arm just below the lower tricep muscle, requiring 11 stitches.


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## FleshEater (Dec 18, 2012)

I have about a 3/4" scar on my right thumb from a third degree burn.

On my sixteenth birthday, a friend and I were jamming in my parents garage. He was playing bass and I was playing guitar. Well, we were jamming a Nirvana somg and decided to switch off instruments. Instead of sitting them down and picking them up, we traded at the same time. When I grabbed a hold of the neck of the bass, a surge of electric took over me. All I remember was feeling like Magneto and hearing him scream "What the f---". When I came to again I was lying next to my dad's air compressor with the guitar shocking the hell out of me still...I remember seeing the air compressor and then a shovel falling on me, that's it.

My friend kicked the bass off of him and unplugged his amp. I remember crawling out of that garage on my hands and knees slobbering. All I could smell was burnt flesh and my thumb was split wide open. The electric entered my hand and left my ankle...it went through hisnhand and left through his head.

Needless to say we spent the night in the hospital. The following day I remember feeling like Imwas run over by a truck.



Lesson of this story? Don't be the factor of completing a circuit!


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## Freakconformist (Dec 18, 2012)

Those  are some pretty epic stories, Sam and Flesheater, I'm glad you guys are alive to tell the tale.


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## IanMGSmith (Dec 18, 2012)

FleshEater said:


> I have about a 3/4" scar on my right thumb from a third degree burn.
> 
> On my sixteenth birthday, a friend and I were jamming in my parents garage. He was playing bass and I was playing guitar. Well, we were jamming a Nirvana somg and decided to switch off instruments. Instead of sitting them down and picking them up, we traded at the same time. When I grabbed a hold of the neck of the bass, a surge of electric took over me. All I remember was feeling like Magneto and hearing him scream "What the f---". When I came to again I was lying next to my dad's air compressor with the guitar shocking the hell out of me still...I remember seeing the air compressor and then a shovel falling on me, that's it.
> 
> ...



OUCH!!! 

Several motor bike accidents including one head-on with a truck, "fun" with an 18" Makita angle grinder (steel cutting) and the usual leg and arm breaks as kids. All healed except for a few minor scars and a right knee which is ever so slightly wonky. 

"Battle" scars I can remember are a broken nose and a broken bottle. The latter entered my skull just behind the left ear. We were teenagers then, me, June Campbell (I think June is in Australia now) and a young German chap who was with us, when we were attacked by a gang of ducktails in a seedy nightclub where we should not have been. Don't recall how many stitches but for years it would tingle/itch and a tiny bit of glass would rub out.

PS: when the nose healed it looked much nicer than the one I was born with. Honest, no jokes. LOL


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## Ariel (Dec 18, 2012)

I have tiny little scars from a 3rd degree sunburn on my breasts from an all-day outdoor concert.  I wore a top that was much too low cut and no sunscreen. The day had started overcast and cloudy then turned brilliantly sunny. I'm very fair skinned.  The concert was a blast.


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## moderan (Dec 18, 2012)

I have a ton of scars. Broke my nose seven times, leaving me with a permanent tilt and a flat spot at the end where the flesh doesn't adhere to the cartilage any more. I've been stabbed twice, and have a large scar in the webbing between my left thumb and forefinger and an even larger one under the ribs on my right side, a foot or so underneath the one-inch round scar from the insertion of a tube the size of a garden hose into my chest cavity two winters ago. On the left side, I have a series of smaller scars from all of the littler tubes that were inserted while I was in the ICU, comatose.
There are mottled areas on my right leg where the contents of an old-fashioned percolator were inadvertantly dumped onto that leg. Like one of the previous posters, I have some graphite content, the result of trying to stick a pencil in the schoolroom ceiling in second grade. The thing rebounded and the point lodged deep within my second finger on my right hand, breaking off. The little black dot is still there, a millimeter or so beneath the skin.
There's a large scar under my testicles where another garden hose was inserted, to release the water that built up when my internal organs quit on me briefly.
All of these places hurt when it rains.
I live in the southwest desert. Is it any wonder?


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## Freakconformist (Dec 18, 2012)

Oh, Amsawtell reminded me of another interesting episode that left me scarred. 

In rural Louisiana in the 1980s, your only option was to burn your garbage. So my brother and I grew up with a weekly fire burning 20 ft outside our back door. Just outside the wooded area that surrounded our trailer.  When I was about four years old, he was six and he had a scientific mind that was always asking "what would happen if..." One Thursday, after my dad got the weekly trash pile burning, he went inside for a moment to check on something, this was a routine event so he didn't really feel compelled to sit there and watch it. 

Well, my brother was okay with watching it for him. He dragged a long stick out of the woods and started messing with the fire from about 5 ft away. As little sisters do, I was following him around and came up and stood about 3-4 ft behind him to see what he was doing. My brother's inquisitive mind wanted to know what would happen to a plastic milk jug if it was held over the fire, so he stuck it on the end of the stick and we both watched as the white plastic oozed down into the fire, coating the stick with hot melted plastic. At that point my dad opened the back door to come back out side and all I remember is my brother shouting, "Hey, Dad, look at this!" BAM! he knocked me in the face with burning melted plastic. 

I had a third degree burn under the outside corner of my left eye, which has now traveled to across my cheek, I have one nasty scar over my left thumb, and random spot burns down my legs and on my feet. I must have gone into shock, because I don't even remember going to the hospital. I wasn't even afraid of fire after that, though I remember the smell of burnt hair very well to this day. I tell you what, though, my Dad wasn't leaving any fire unattended after that.


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## Ariel (Dec 18, 2012)

Freakconformist said:


> Oh, Amsawtell reminded me of another interesting episode that left me scarred.
> 
> In rural Louisiana in the 1980s, your only option was to burn your garbage. So my brother and I grew up with a weekly fire burning 20 ft outside our back door. Just outside the wooded area that surrounded our trailer.  When I was about four years old, he was six and he had a scientific mind that was always asking "what would happen if..." One Thursday, after my dad got the weekly trash pile burning, he went inside for a moment to check on something, this was a routine event so he didn't really feel compelled to sit there and watch it.
> 
> ...



I am very glad you're ok today.  Other than some small self-mutilation scars that are fading and the normal bike wreck/falling scars I have been very lucky over the years and your story has reminded me of that.


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## Freakconformist (Dec 18, 2012)

amsawtell said:


> I am very glad you're ok today.  Other than some small self-mutilation scars that are fading and the normal bike wreck/falling scars I have been very lucky over the years and your story has reminded me of that.



I'm okay, it didn't leave me disfigured or anything. Most of the plastic stuck to itself, so I only ended up with a shallow scar about the size of a penny under my eye. It's only noticeable in the right light today. The one on my hand is bigger, but so light hardly anybody notices it. The fact that it's not the first thing I thought of should be telling.


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## Ariel (Dec 19, 2012)

I survived a house fire my brother died in and it is coming up on the anniversary so anything where someone was hurt in a fire gets my sympathy and makes me cringe.

I am missing part of my kneecap on my right knee where I was shoved down onto the sidewalk by this girl.  I have a biopsy scar on my left leg where a birthmarwaste birthmark looks like a rash on the inside of my thigh) was tested for cancer.  Needless to say I do not wear shorts or short dresses.


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## Bilston Blue (Dec 23, 2012)

Quite minor in comparison: I have a scar on my right buttock where a fatty lump was removed; a still-very-prominent-nearly thirty-years-after-the-event scar in the shape of an upper case L, from a tackle that went wrong in a football game; and two faded scars on my face (one on my cheek and one just above my right eye), the result of a fight with a large, angry kid holding a milk bottle. That last one happened in the sixth form common room in school.


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## Staff Deployment (Dec 23, 2012)

From when I was nine I was cursed with scoliosis. Tried putting it in a full-body brace for four years, but with the combination of my lack of diligence and the untameability of the condition, it didn't work.

So I had surgery.

I got three things from the surgery: I'm not a hunchback, my spine is about 50% titanium, and I have a scar running down from just below my shoulder blades to the small of my back, about twelve inches long.

Sometimes I pretend I am a cyborg.


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## Lewdog (Dec 23, 2012)

Staff Deployment said:


> From when I was nine I was cursed with scoliosis. Tried putting it in a full-body brace for four years, but with the combination of my lack of diligence and the untameability of the condition, it didn't work.
> 
> So I had surgery.
> 
> ...



Dear lord you don't walk around like JP from "Grandma's Boy" do you?


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## Ariel (Jan 6, 2013)

I have a spot on my right knee where just a bit of my kneecap is missing.  The scar is large and round and I can stick my finger on it and push and there's nothing under there.

It happened one summer when I was eight.  The neighborhood I live in is hilly and the hill I live on is a gradual one that doesn't seem too steep until you're near the top.  We're one of Kansas City's oldest neighborhoods and we have concrete sidewalks.  Well, I was racing another little girl down the sidewalk and I beat her so she pushed me down.  With the push, the grade, and the speed I fell to my knee and all of the combined factors above served to help me "bounce" on my knee.
I saw part of my knee come out when I rolled myself over and I couldn't stand up.   My mom was livid. She picked me up and carried me into the house.  I remember crying a lot and crying more when the hydrogen peroxide hit my knee.

Of course, despite my mom watching, me feeling her hand on my back, etc the little girl lied about pushing me and called me a liar when her mother asked about it.

I was outside and ready to play again in about an hour.  Now, as an adult when it rains or gets cold I have this knee that cracks and creaks.


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## Staff Deployment (Jan 6, 2013)

amsawtell said:


> Of course, despite my mom watching, me feeling her hand on my back, etc the little girl lied about pushing me and called me a liar when her mother asked about it.



Children make up lies and then start to believe it themselves. To this day that girl will be insistent you just fell on your own. Luckily it seems the only lasting damage was a kind of boneless knee parlour trick.


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## Dominique (Jan 6, 2013)

I have one scar on the back of my neck, it's only a small line, but I got it around the age of 6 when I lived up in Winsconsin. There was this beautiful lake behind the house I lived in that me and my mom would go hang out by. But one day, there was a goose. So my mom was taking pictures and I was squatting on the edge of the water watching this goose and it swam towards us. My mom and I got happy that a bird was coming to us, maybe swim by us or circle around. Instead if swam up onto shore hissing at us and attacked us, primarily me and bit me on the back of the neck until my mom beat it off and we ran. And to this day, I am terrified of geese.


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## blue_evertonian (Jan 7, 2013)

On New Year's Eve a few years back, I was washing up my girlfriend's dishes whilst she was out. We were supposed to be heading into Melbourne to watch the fireworks etc. with friends. Instead, a porcelain bowl broke clean in half and sliced open the top of my thumb. Suffice it to say, i celebrated New Year's in a hospital ward...


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## Dave Watson (Jan 7, 2013)

Got a cool little scar just at the outside edge of my right eyebrow in the shape of a bird's foot which I gained while on a snowboarding holiday in Andorra. I didn't sustain my wound trying to flip a sweet Radial or pull off a bodacious Method, but instead while trying to scientifically prove that drinking a lot of absinthe makes one immune to pain. 

I may have headbutted the stone tile floor, lost some blood, received six stitches to my face and spent the next few days looking like a side of raw beef, but the experiment was a complete success as it didn't actually hurt that much at all. Next day though, different story. Concussion at high altitudes is not fun.


                                                              .


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## Tettsuo (Jan 7, 2013)

They told me I couldn't drink coffee.

At the age of 11 I was told, "You're too young to drink coffee," more times than I could count... at the time.  So I concocted a scheme.  Saturday morning, I woke up for my morning cartoons before anyone else.

Scampering to the kitchen, I made the decision to defy my elders and drink me a nice large cup of coffee before anyone got up.  So, with cartoon playing on the TV and a pot of water boiling on the stove, I searched for a mug to mix my coffee in.  Finding nothing clay that was large enough to fit my coffee appetite, I grabbed a tall, large repurpose mayonaisse glass jar.  Some of you are already aware of my mistake I'm sure, and shaking your heads, but cut me some slack!  I was only 11 at the time.  So anyway, I put in a few spoonfuls of beautiful brown dried coffee, a few more spoonfuls of sugar, and set the can of evaporated milk close by to complete my plan for some warm coffee as I watched cartoons.  Finally ready with a pot of boiling water, I don a part of oven mittens and lift the pot off of the blue flames licked the bottom of the pot.  Carefully, I move the steel container, still vibrating with exploding bubbles of water to the awaiting glass and white and red can of milk.

The glass was about half full before it exploded, showering my chest with boiling hot, barely mixed, brown coffee water.  Shocked by both the sound and sight, I jumped, releasing the pot of water that dropped on the countertop, splashing an additional cup of still steaming water on my chest.

I did not scream.  I did not make a single sound.  Not even a peep.

The pain was... extraordinary, but fear of my elders was greater than the pain on my still sizzling chest.  Working through it all, I cleaned up the mess to perfection.  I left no sight of the mess made, making sure to discard the broken glass, the watery coffee blanketing the countertop and the put back the rest of the ingredients exactly how I found it.  The only proof was the bright red skin on my boney little chest.

Watching cartoons on that little colored TV was difficult to say the least.  I really couldn't enjoy Bugs Bunny as real agony is very distracting.

My mother strolls in, her slippers lightly slapping the wood along through the livingroom floor, and calms says good morning.  I reply with a whimper.  She heads to the kitchen and calls back to me if I was hungry.  I barely remember if I responding to her.  She comes back into the livingroom and glances at the TV then back at me.  Her face twists a bit, then tightens as she glares at glowing red underneath my tanktop.

"Are you okay?" she asks.
".....no."
"What's wrong?"
"I burned myself." It's here where the tears began to stream down my face.

I spilled the beans right then and there.  She didn't feel fit to punish me, as the pain was lesson enough in her eyes.

My chest is still a bit discolored.


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## Ariel (Jan 7, 2013)

Does anyone else get mystery bruises? Currently I have these giant black and green bruises on my knee and I have no idea where they came from.


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## Lewdog (Jan 7, 2013)

amsawtell said:


> Does anyone else get mystery bruises? Currently I have these giant black and green bruises on my knee and I have no idea where they came from.



The green ones came from aliens.  The black ones I'm not real sure.  Are you sure you wash your knees regularly?


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## alanmt (Jan 8, 2013)

I have a small dent in my forehead from a skateboarding accident. A scar on my right bicep from jumping off a haystack onto a barb wire fence. A scar on one leg from a rockclimbing injury. Two abdominal scars from hernia surgeries.  Nothing too spectactular.  :lone:


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## Dannabis (Jan 11, 2013)

I have an inch long scar running down the outer side of my thumb. I was on holiday in Greece, when I awoke in the night needing to empty the old bladder. Those of you who have been in a generic tourist hotel will understand that walking on the wet bathroom tiles is on par with walking on ice. As soon as I walked in, I slid straight across the floor. Still upright, I instinctively tried to grab onto the sink area. What I actually grabbed with the sharp end of my razor. It cut straight through into my thumb cutting the end of the radial artery. Luckily, it's thin in the thumb and didn't allow enough blood flow to cause any real damage, but there was an impressive amount spurting out!



I wasn't naked in the picture, just wearing underwear!


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## Ariel (Jan 11, 2013)

I'm the first aid supervisor at work but I can't stand to see other people's blood.  My stomach turns at the sight.  Seeing that picture just made me queasy.


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## JosephB (Jan 11, 2013)

Gross. I don't really know why anyone would think we'd need to see those pictures. We're all some kind of writer with some amount of imagination, presumably -- so I think we could get the idea without them.


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## Leyline (Jan 11, 2013)

I don't remember how I got most of my scars. That's the nature of the Beast, in my case.


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## JosephB (Jan 11, 2013)

I have a few on my hand and arm -- courtesy of a dirt bike and a barbed wire fence. The fact I'd never ridden any kind of bike had something to do with it, but there were also mind-altering substances involved -- which is probably why I was on the bike in the first place. You know, the redneck's last words -- "Hey everybody, watch this!"


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## Leyline (Jan 11, 2013)

JosephB said:


> I have a few on my hand and arm -- courtesy of a dirt bike and a barbed wire fence. The fact I'd never ridden any kind of bike had something to do with it, but there were also mind-altering substances involved -- which is probably why I as on the bike in the first place. You know, the redneck's last words -- "Hey everybody, watch this!"



Ha. Where I'm from, the preferred epitaph is "Hold my beer. Check this out."


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## Ariel (Jan 11, 2013)

I have some small scars across my arms and shoulders.  I have a self-mutilating stress habit where I pick at the skin on my arms.  It's mostly under control now considering I've learned other methods of dealing with stress but the resulting scars aren't exactly pretty.


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## JosephB (Jan 11, 2013)

Leyline said:


> Ha. Where I'm from, the preferred epitaph is "Hold my beer. Check this out."



Ha ha. Yeah, I think I've heard that one too.


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## Jagunco (Jan 12, 2013)

A few years ago I was doing capoeira, after some time training it was deemed my time time to learn a move called 'Cruz' (forgive the spelling)

This involves kicking at someone and then, when they catch your foot, you backflip away from them.... yeah right.

Anyway because there was a shortage of experienced people in our class I was forced to do it onto crash mats (a lot of crash mats) and so we did it a few times and my confidence grew and grew.

A couple of weeks later we were training in this move and the cry was 'one more and then lets go to the pub' so we arrayed ourselves before the mats, I dutifully fed a kick to my intructor and then he pushed up and I leapt with all my might...

That last words I heard him say were 'oh sorry'

He hadn't pushed my hard enough so my spring didn;t carry me through the flip onto my feet. No problem the crashmats where there and I landed on my shoulders, the only issue was that I had thrown my knee up for momentum in the flip and when my head hit the mats I basically kneed myself in the eye.

It was quite possibly the most painfull thing I've experienced. I swore loudly and then sprang up and did a lap of the room, ran to the toilet and attempted to be sick, after a few retches I managed to compose myself and put a carefree smile on my face and when to let my instructor apologize about ten time, then went for a coffee with him....

I slapped ice on it and thought I'd beaten the swelling but the next day I was working in the garden with my dad and I went into the house to blow my nose. Felt something pop in my face and experienced a moments panic when I thought my eye had dropped out. My Father heard my cry of dismay and looked up from the gardening when I came out again and said...

'Whats the matter? Oh. Bloody hell.'
I said, 'how does it look?'
'Bloody horrible,' and then, as if I'd been asking him how a new jumper had looked, returned to his pot plants.

Of course the best part of it was is that I had to face everyone at work with the blackest eye you've ever seen swolen to epic proportions. And of course everyone wanted to know what happened, thinking I'd been fighting over the weekend.

So of course I had to tell them how I managed to knee my in the eye and I was the aughing stock for the week...


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## Lewdog (Jan 18, 2013)

I have a good hillbilly scar.  When I was in third grade, my school was literally next to a corn field.  We came up with this ingenious idea to shuck off the corn, then break the corn cobs in two and throw them at each other!  They don't have corn on them so they won't hurt right?  Yeah...well I took one in the left eye that gave me about a half inch scar and made blood leak into my eye.  I had to go to the doctor and have them drain some of the blood.  It was fun!  Having someone stick something in your eye when you are awake, sucks.


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