our bodies, ourselves

Lauryn accuses me of being obsessed with bodies lately. I can't hellllllp it. My academic life is all about bodies right now and in my personal life, bodies (mine and specific others') are of utmost importance to me, too. Plus, all the undergrads are back on campus and lo, there is amazingly interesting people watching to do again. Probably a day doesn't pass when we're walking together and I say, "Bodies are SO interesting," by which I really mean the diversity of bodies out there and the ways in which we do (and do not) adorn them.

In keeping with this theme, I'm going to tell you the story of the five identifiable scars on my body. I've been thinking about them lately (and remember telling Mel once that scars are interesting because they remind you of a past, even if it is one you'd rather forget) because I've been wondering what makes my body mine. How is identifiable to me, and to others, *as* me? Is my body me? Does that make my mind me? Is my mind part of my body? My scars are one way you could pick me out of the morgue, I guess, but their stories are much more interesting than that.

In order of earliest to most recent:

1. The tiny scar on the right side of my nose is from when I was a baby and at my babysitter's house. She had recently gotten new doors hung in her home and one of them was open. I crawled right into it. My mom tells this story very dramatically and can detail the wails she heard as she entered the house, having rushed from work at the babysitter's call.

2. The scar mostly obscured by my right eyebrow is a result of my playing Airplane on the ottoman in our family room when I was around 10. I fell off the ottoman and onto the edge of the brick fireplace, head first. My mom wasn't home, so my dad tended to the wound and took me to Urgent Care where they proceeded to stitch up the gash while I protested loudly that I was going "to tell my mommy on you!" for what they were doing to me. Heh. I also got to wear a bandage wrapped all the way around my head while the stitches did their magic. Kick ass.

3. The scar just below my belly button is the only remaining one of a cluster from when I had my gallbladder removed when I was 18. Until that point, I'd never experienced major illness and I pretty much thought my world was going to end when I went weeks being ridiculously ill and without a diagnosis. I especially thought it was going to end when I had to have surgery, the prospect of which scared the living crap out of me (as all the MHSer can attest, if they even remember). Happily, my world didn't end, natch.

4. The scar on the right side of my neck is from a negligent dermatologist who did a shitty job removing a bothersome mole when I was in college.

5. The scar just below my left kneecap is from our fateful canoe trip up north, the one for which I was in no shape physically to canoe, let alone had any experience doing so and thus, I kept banking myself on rocks and running into stuff in the shallow water. Since I was sitting in the bottom of the canoe to keep it balanced, my knee kept hitting the bench in front of it everytime I steered directly into a rock and/or tree. I believe I actually got the gash when I got out of the canoe and stepped wrong on a rock and went headfirst into the water, kneecap landing on a VERY! SHARP! ROCK! as Matt righted my boat. The subsequent banging into the bench did not help matters. When we finally finished up, the gash was pretty big and probably would have required stitches in normal life, but we were camping and normal life wasn't really available to us. It's a pretty impressive scar, I have to say.

So there you have it--my body in scars.