Your tattoos or scars - which has the best story?

I have no tats so I'll go with the scar in my right eyebrow, it was a long neck Bud bottle, that I never saw coming.  

I forgot, I have two tatts, one on each hip, given by the radiation techs at the cancer center.  (that's a story for another time)


Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.  Lao Tzu

I've always suspected that boys have tattoos and men have scars. But perhaps that's impolitic these days.

My best scar is on my left forearm where I ran a dirt bike into a free-hanging, unmarked, single wire barbed wire drift fence. If I had not thrown that arm up at the last moment it would have hit my neck, and perhaps we would not be having this conversation.

They stopped counting at 300 stitches. They said after that, I got the bulk rate.

Jim Fry wrote:They stopped counting at 300 stitches. They said after that, I got the bulk rate.

C'mon Jim, give a few more details and maybe you'll have bragging rights!

Two sets of scars caused by our dogs - one on the top of my thigh when our collie cross Ben took exception to the petrol station attendant trying to helpfully wash our windows.

Ben launched himself from the back set of the car and scrambled across my lap, I was wearing shorts and his nails scratched me.

Both my elbows are scarred from falling off a bicycle (more than once) while exercising our current older dog Dillon.

I would loop his lead over the handlebars as we cycled around but didn't always release his lead quickly enough if he decided to take off to chase a cat or feral rabbit.

Dillon is now 14 years old and neither of us are fit enough to go cycling together, our walks are much more leisurely these days.

No tattoos.

Back in the late 1990's to early 2000's there was an ad from Toyota, often on the back of some of the off road magazines that read, "Scars are tattoos with better stories." No tattoos, but plenty of scars. I have matching scars on the ends of my eyebrows. One from going down with heat stroke, the other from falling and breaking my face, rib, and leg. Apparently my friend found me on the ground and got me up, and I was walking around. I have no memory of anything from 5 hours before to 3 hours after hitting my head. The scars are from pushing the hinge of my glasses into my eyebrow on either side. My best stories aren't related to my scars.

Douglas,    I've always suspected that alcohol intake had a large role in both!   Sober for 46 years now.

My most recent scars were radiation burns from stage 4 anal/rectal cancer treatment, trust me one "should " never have burns on your heiniebumper!!!

I've got 45 stitches on my left arm. Thirty-three from an incident when I was 12 involving a water balloon fight with the next-door neighbor kid, a slick garage floor, and a wood-framed storm door with a plate glass window. The rest were from surgery to remove squamous cell carcinoma. The second was less traumatic than the first since I was under anesthesia. I've also got assorted dog bites, and lacerations from "stupid human tricks." I generally don't talk about those, especially to paramedics and ER techs, because if they're aware of the SHT circumstances, they're a lot more thorough with debriding and use wider gauge needles.

j

Not the manliest scar, but at least it has a story!

My left forefinger has an inch scar moving out from the nail that most people wouldn't notice.

I was a volunteer fireman for some time and was doing a training exercise with my captain. We were learning how to tear apart cars with hand tools in case our hydraulic jaws of life failed.

I was tasked with holding a Halligan bar against the gap between the car door with the adz pointed into the frame while my captain swung a sledge hammer to gain access.



My captain slipped mid swing and the sledge hammer went up high on the bar and connected with my left forefinger. It was instantaneous numbness and I couldn't see anything wrong because I was wearing thick firefighting gloves.

Low and behold after I took off my glove, my fingertip had burst and I then had a lovely hospital visit lasting about six hours before I could get five stiches to close it up.

We both learned a good lesson on hand placement and swing technique.

No ink, but a few scars. My best were gained in the 5th grade. I was running, fell, and somehow came down on my knuckles on both hands. Both were heavily scarred.    Flash forward to my first real job. It is in corrections with juveniles.  There is a rumor about what a badass I must have been to have all my knuckles busted up like that. Of course, I said nothing to discourage it.

Have a few tattoos, but this is the most meaningful. The crazy in my family goes back at least three generations, so there's three links for that, then there's me, removed from the crazy but will always be broken, and the new chain that represents my children. When I'm old enough to have grandkids, I'll add on to it.

No tatts but plenty of scars. Elbows and knees show the results of many falls as a child. The one that tells the best story - on my lower abdomen - an emergency c-section that I never saw coming but resulted in a gorgeous baby boy. (Well grown up now)

That would be a toss-up for me I have wild stories of both a German shepherd almost took out my eye at age 6 from biting my nose i have teeth mark scars on my upper lip and eye ridge area. The scar stories get crazier & more reckless and violent from there.  I have matching tattoos with 6 people, one of whom I met on the street an hour before, she paid, never saw her again, its a story like from The Twilight Zone. At one point I looked up and was like okay Uni, what's really going on??? The worst tattoo I ever got. I was smart and got it in a hidden place.  This chick had never gotten a tattoo before and placed it right on her side belly hip area. She was mortified the next day. The tats are of the full moon with our birthdays under it. There was a crazy full moon that night and shit was getting weirder by the minute. Mis that with downtown Austin Texas in 2011 and the rest is history.

i've got a bunch of both.
the tattoos i enjoy greatly. the scars, not so much, but both do have fun stories (some years later, at least, for the scars....)

I had a bike accident and lost a good portion of the skin on the left side of my face. For about 5 years that side would color differently than my right side. Then it was less wrinkled than my right side!!! Now, 25 years later, you can't tell anymore.

I have a good-sized scar on my left upper arm from removing a melanoma (left arm has lots of skin cancer spots from foolishly driving with the window open when i was younger; all my tattoos are on my right arm, which has no melanomas: my dermatologist approves!).
I also keloid, so it didn't heal up pretty, and it tends to attract attention. When someone is being a nosy fool, I'll say it was a bullet, point out the other half dozen similar scars i have from other melanoma removals, and say they should see what the other guy looked like. That tends to change the subject real quick.

(young, pale people: please wear sunscreen or cover up and don't drive with your tender arms hanging out the window!!)

I always saw my skin as a finished work, not a blank canvas, so no tattoos now or in the foreseeable future.

(That said, I don't judge other people for getting tattoos...tattoos/piercing seems to be a natural human inclination, and it's fascinating to be alive just as the one historically brief odd flicker of anti-tattoo sentiment dies out from Western culture.)

None of my many scars have cool stories either, it's all stuff like "touched the upper element while removing a lasagna from the oven" or "scabbed my knee and then picked the scab for a long time" or "my friend's pet rat bit me because I stuck my finger in its cage like a moron".

All the really insane stuff that happened to me (car crashes, airline terrorists, educational and professional sabotage) never left a mark.

Probably my best one is a scar on my forearm from a burn I got in my teens.  Growing up, I was responsible for mowing and trimming my parent's yard.  One day after trimming with a gas trimmer, I picked it up at the mid handle like I was curling it and the muffler slid across my forearm.  I actually heard it sizzle as the hot muffler passed over my skin.  My skin stung a little but I was not terribly concerned.  I hung up the trimmer in its normal spot, then looked down at my arm and I saw a 3" section of charred, black skin that curled up at me.  It was surprising how burned it was but how little it hurt.  I went inside and showed my mother who panicked.  We got it treated with some aloe and lightly bandaged up, but the scar was there.  Still makes a pretty good little story to tell.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:hot muffler

Just curious, do you have a matching one on your right calf?
When I got mine (even though I knew to be careful-- it was not my first time out on a bike-- it seems to happen eventually if you ride a motorcycle in a warm place) as a dopey young person it felt almost like a badge of honor. Pretty much everyone I know has the same scar!

Nope Tereza, mine is a loner.

I have a scar across the bridge of my nose from blasting through a glass door, usually hidden by glasses.  A cut below my left eye that blends in with smile/laugh lines and you have to look to see it. A shiny stripe down my left shin from knee to ankle from striking a diving board.

Like many of us, I have a bunch of the smaller scars from accidents involving animals or tools.
I have managed to be bitten, at some point or other, by a representative of every species of animal I have cared for for more than a year - I still don't know if it's a result of arrogance on my part resulting in a lack of awareness, or if it's The Powers That Be letting me experience the worst that animal has to offer so I can relax and not be afraid of it anymore.

Some of the smaller scars from critters have been covered with other scars from other things, or have healed over time.

A couple of small spots on my face have survived  - one from having chicken pox at 12, and scratching at it, the other is usually hidden by my glasses and is on the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. A doctor cut out a small skin cancer under a local with the "brand new laser scalpel" back in 1978. He had previously told me "You have skin cancer and might die." I was 10. I now know I will die, no maybes about it. (Breathing is a dangerous exercise. Oxidation kills.)

I have also a collection of scars from various medical procedures - I've had my head *almost* cut off three times and the doctors used the same wound track each time, so there's a lovely blue scar line running across the front of my throat with a mass of scar tissue from where the "perfect" spot for a tracheostomy lives.
Large matching skin grafts on my lower arms where the tissue was taken to form a flap and installed at another place on my body.
A large patch on my left thigh from which one of the skin grafts was taken and a "lop-sided, badly done, incomplete tummy-tuck" on my lower abdomen from where the other skin graft was taken.
I have red and silver radiation burn scars along the front of my throat from being a very pale-skinned human.
I have a long scar along my skull that's hidden by my hair for the plate they put on to cover the hole from the brain surgery.
I have a "second belly button" from the gastrostomies. The second time took much longer to heal, but I had kept it for 9 months.

My new goal is to leave this world with as many original body parts in their original places as possible.

I thought about having a DNR tattooed across my chest, but had several meetings with various medical and health care professionals to talk over the laws involved and learned that it wouldn't change anything, so haven't. I'd like a tattoo but haven't decided on what to get where, so have been putting it off. No rush.

Does the large divot, ok maybe it's more like a small dent in my right calf, from a close encounter with an angry copperhead count as a scar?

I did step between one of my beloved retrievers and said serpent.


Peace

No tattoos here. I have lots of scars, I seem to scar pretty easily.
The most interesting is probably a scar on my left ankle from mud wrestling when I was a student - there turned out to be shards of pottery in the clay we used.

I always told my daughter scars were stories in braille.

LOL Heck of a topic. No tats I always said they had plenty of ID with the scars. The most scars I have are reoccurring welding splatter scars on my left hand and arm. My hands have years of scaring from working them all my life. On my claves I have one on each in almost the same place from a hunk of barbed wire out of some fill dirt the weed eater picked up.  That was no fun.  

Most of them I've had long enough to forget where / how I got them and quite a few have vanished over the years.

(1) Left forearm, horse bite, or super pinch from large square teeth.
(2) Right thigh, horse kick that I saw coming, almost got out of the way!
(3) Face full of tail, taking off an almost new cap, before I could recover, cap was step on several times and a fresh load of horse apples was
    deposited. (horse #1)  Made a scar on my heart, it was an almost new cap!!!


Peace