"Remember: If you die without any scars you haven't lived."

I got my finger slammed in a car door when I was nine. Had to have it in a little cast for a while. Imagine the humiliation: my mother sewed a little cloth covering for the cast and made me wear it "to keep it clean." Yeesh.

I put my palm down on the back seat of the family car, not seeing the bee resting there. That's a pain that lingered.

Fell off the old bike bunches of times, but only once had to have the knee attended to, in a rather primitive way ("let's just cut some of this skin off") by the pediatrician. Still have those scars on said knee.

Never a swimmer, I tried to swim farther out in the lake than my cousin on a family outing. BARELY made it back to shore, gasping and staggering.

Went to a day camp at the YWCA. Minding my own business one day in the "deep end" of the pool, another kid jumped off the diving board directly onto my neck. Hurt for weeks.

Broke my big toe falling down the stairs!

That's all I remember. Not too bad an inventory, all things considered.

Burns, cuts, stabs, slices, explosions, whacks, falls, steps on broken glass, nails in the foot, 3-pound sledge to the thumb, torn ear, skinned knees, elbows and palms, various animal bites, scratches and kicks. Two almost-drownings that I was rescued from by strangers. I used to joke when I was a kid that my superpower was the ability to accidentally bash my head into things -- I once smashed headfirst into an airconditioning unit while trotting up stairs. But ... never a stitch until I was almost 50, never a broken bone.

Burns are the worst. Everything else hurts when it happens, then subsides. Burns hurt on and on. Safety tip: When using a mortar and pestle to make gunpowder, mix the sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter AFTER grinding. Or wear gloves.

Heh. I had a ... rather odd mother. If I got hurt, it made her angry. So I learned early on to hide everything. I fell off a roof one time, about 10 feet, and felt woozy for some time after, but she never knew. Climbing up a heavy chest of drawers in a hallway when I was about 6, the thing fell on me and pinned me against the wall, where I stayed for quite some time before I finally called for help and she came shrieking in to rescue me.

...

I've thought many times that all of that stuff was necessary training in being careful. I could easily be wrong, but I wonder if the willingness of some kids today to do the Jackass stunts is just that they've been protected from learning about real danger. The thing is, if you get hurt when you're little, the safety lesson gets burned in deep. But if you wait to get hurt until you're a teen, and tougher, you might just decide that it's not so bad, and take larger chances.

Two words are all that are needed..."chemistry set". I imagine that most of us have stories that feature these words prominently, My best was getting molten-flaming sugar spilled/splashed on my left shin. The scar went to the bone and I still have it today (it was listed by the USAF as an identifying mark in my records in Nam!).

Do scars from broken beer bottles count?

I never had any broken bones, but that was more luck than anything. I did plenty of things that should have gotten me pretty well banged up, but I guess I had a guardian angel looking over me (kidding!)

I did give myself a nasty cut on the thumb when I was 8 or 9. I was trying to whittle like my grandpa, but was cutting towards me when the knife slipped and sliced from the tip to the knuckle of my thumb. My first thought was that I'd get into trouble for being stupid (which I would have because I was), so I ran inside and wrapped my thumb in a bunch of paper towels until it stopped bleeding, then put some band-aids on it.

My mom asked me about it a couple of days later, and I just told her that I'd cut it. She asked me if it was infected, I said no, and that was it. Of course it turned out later that it was infected, mildly, but it ran its course and the swelling went down. My mom still doesn't know how bad it really was.

I lost half a tooth to the back of my cousin's head, too. I couldn't hide that one, because I was crying and bleeding, and my cousin was crying because he was sure my tooth was stuck in his skull. I've had a cap on that tooth ever since.

I only stubbed my toe once, but it was enough. I swore to never go outside barefoot again, at least not on asphalt, and I never have. Of all the pains and aches I've experienced, that split big toe was the worst, in my memory. I never let it happen again.

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Apparently the black rubber mats now used under playground equipment to protect children from injuries when they fall are causing injuries themselves. As the New York Daily News reported last Sunday:

Two of the city’s burn centers evidently reported treating 10 cases of playground burns last year.....

The reason? The mats can get as hot as 160 degrees on a sunny day.

In other words, this "cure" is causing its own problems. I remember that we had playgrounds with sand or grass and dirt under the swings, monkey bars, space ship, and so on. Soft enough, and our parents just had to deal with laundry to get out the ground-in dirt and grass stains.

And yes, I have my share of internal and external scars from childhood. We were taught to rinse and bandage cuts to keep out the dirt, but unless it was something serious, we got to handle things ourselves. Ditto burns, bites (except snakes and strange dogs), stubbed toes, split lips, and sprains. I remember taking a chunk out of one knee in junior high or high school, and having a teacher tell me that I could not change the bandages in class because it turned her stomach. Hey, if the gauze filled up, I changed them. And in college, I remember waiting my turn to play pool after we'd been building-climbing when one of the guys noticed there was blood all over my leg and on the hem of my dress. I'd brought home a three-inch gash on the side of my knee. Probably wouldn't have done it if I'd been in jeans, but it was a very hot, sticky night and I was wearing as little as possible; even did the climb barefooted because I was in sandals and didn't want to get left behind. I brushed off the guys' concern by pointing out that the gash had clotted and so could wait until I got back to my dorm to clean and banadage it.

I set my hand on fire when I was playing (I'm sorry, experimenting) with burning alcohol at about 13. I was trying to carry the can to a sink to pour it down, but I couldn't get a good grip on it with the scissors I was using. So it fell down, set my hand on fire, and started to burn the bathrobe on the wall. I used the mattress to smother my hand, then splashed water on the robe. Then came the hard part, having to tell my mother about the growing blisters on my hand.

That was probably the most adventurous - or stupidest - thing I did as a child, so I'm probably not the best test for this sort of discussion. On a smaller scale, though, our parents told us to suck our finger if it was cut, let it breathe instead of bandaging it, and wash it off if there was dirt in it. They figured children got dirty as part of growing up, and that a few bumps along the way weren't worth a lot of energy.

It's the emotional scars when they make mistakes in their 20s that can be a lot scarier for a parent -- and the child.

Frank Moorman, skeptic