There's the one in my hairline that many of you saw created when I face-planted in a bar (hiccups). I have about four or five little scars on my fingers from knife accidents. There used to be a vaccination scar on my left arm, but it's faded. My entire body (especially hands and chest) is covered with tiny white spots (hard to see, most of them) from chicken pox, including one big 1/2" one on my tummy.
I'm fond of the tooth scars on my knuckles.
Also the one on my palm from a putty knife I was using to scrape paint off of a skateboard.
i have tiny almost invisible scars on the fingers from cooking and the bcg vaccine scar, that's all
i tried to imagine all your scars, but it needs more like close or repeated reading :)
I have only one good scar, extending from my wrist six inches down my inside right forearm, taken from an accident with the circular sander while trying to remove the previously unknown cat piss stains from the 80-year-old hardwood floor of my apartment the night before I turned in the key and asked for my deposit back. The scar is fading, but my hatred for my cat still burns strong.
One on my forehead, from falling over as a little kid. And one at the corner of my eye, from falling off my bike. Couple of minor nicks on my knees, and some on my leg that have now largely faded [where a dog basically tried to kill me].
I have one in my eyebrow. Someone both hit me and threw a bottle at my face [when I was prone]. I'm not sure which caused the scar. I have another one-inch one under my lower lip, where someone kicked me in the head sufficiently hard that I bit through it.
Aside from a smallpox vaccination and various hard-to-see chickenpox scars, I'm almost scar-free. I have this now barely visible one on the back of my hand from the deserved repercussions of sixth-grade sexual harrassment, and a little one just under my nose that you'd have to get close to really see. That one I got at four years old after falling face-first onto a glass Christmas tree ornament. Took several stitches to re-attach the left side of my nose to my face again.
Note to self: do not read this thread.
Apparently ttaM is not as likable as we've been led to believe.
6: So you were just born that way?
I have matching scars on both my index finger knuckles from glass-washing incidents a decade apart. Actually got stitches for the one.
And that is the story of my body's incredibly fortunate* life thus far.
* Cowardice/caution played a role, too.
As already appears to be typical on the thread, burns and cuts on my hands and face that I can find but that wouldn't be plain to anyone else. A chicken pock on face, about a quarter inch across, is probably my most visible scar, usually hidden under my glasses. I've got a vacination scar on one shoulder.
10: JUST IN HIS HANDS AND SIDE!!!
One crater right between the eyes from chicken pox. I was just about to start high school when my kindergarten–aged brother brought it home. My mom said she'd tried to expose me and middle brother again and again but it was my little booger of a brother who did it. He only got the usual specks, middle brother had a bad case, but I was completely covered over: pox on my tongue, pox on my eyeballs, pox in places there really shouldn't be pox. But that's the only scar!
A four-inch scar on my leg from a late night drinking-and-rock climbing incident during college that was exactly as stupid as it sounds. Four staples and 17 stitches.
I've got a couple of reminders why angry people and knives aren't something to be around. Few others in that general vein.
14: I had a terrible time with them too, caught them later in elementary school, so not as late as you. The bottoms of my feet were covered to the point I really couldn't walk for days.
pox in places there really shouldn't be pox
That was my experience when I caught it at 13. Everywhere it was at all possible to have a lesion, I had 'em. My brother had about twenty red dots on his chest and barely felt anything. I, on the other hand, dry heaved 'til I burst blood vessels in my eyes.
A tiny scar on my left knee when my first boyfriend tried to tickle me and I kneed him in the mouth, cutting my knee on his teeth.
Since then I have warned every guy that I really, really don't like to be tickled.
A fading shiny spot on my forehead, used to be a scar from when my brother tried to chase me with a dead spider on a flyswatter when I was five, and I ran into a door frame. I got him back later by biting him so hard I broke skin, leaving a bite mark on his arm till this day.
Yeah, my brother had a really light case, but when I caught them, it was torture. I'd always heard that little kids don't get them as bad as bigger kids, but I was only four, and had horrible, horrible pox. I missed my dance recital and spent many days in a row in a cold bathtub soaking in a mixture of baking soda and calamine lotion.
Left hand: pencil, screwdriver, chisel, pruners. One nice thing about sharp tools is that they leave clean scars.
A small, dim blue dot on a fingertip, legacy of playing with the awl on a Swiss Army knife when I was 12 or 13.
A short, pale line on the inside of a heel, where the stump of a tree dug a groove, stripping out a divot of bloody flesh. (A little one, to be sure, but still kind of surprising to see at the time.)
Two short scars on the back of a thumb, from a tumble down some stairs.
A pale line, about as wide as a mechanical pencil and as long as my little finger, near my left elbow, from (I think) a fall off a bike.
Whatever calluses might be left on a few broken bones.
I have a scar on the back of my left hand that used to be matched by one on the palm.
I also have the tip of a pencil embedded in my wrist?
Presumably this makes me nerd jesus.
I also currently have about a dozen little holes and burns in the index finger of my right hand due to half-assed solder technique.
Scar on my left ankle, from being dragged behind a car with a loop of barbed wire wrapped around my foot.
This incident indirectly led to my losing my virginity, so that was good (even though it was the worst sex ever).
6 - I also have a scar in my eyebrow. Mine's from falling face first on a post hole digger in the backyard while trying to cajole the dog into jumping over said post hole digger, which was propped up on a chair.
Also have a chin scar from face-planting on the sidewalk while jogging. One on my knee from the same incident.
I am wicked coordinated.
My biggest scars are related to various biking related ablations, but those aren't really interesting, just prominent.
23: You lost your virginity in an unreleased David Lynch film, I'm guessing?
My scars are where you can't see them -- in my soul.
I have almost no scars. One on my knee from standing up on a moving bus when I was seven, and now one surgical one on my back that my sister says looks 'fierce', but is actually boring.
shivbunny has scars all over his hands and forearms mostly from various work accidents.
President Bush can get a sense of them, John.
I have a dent in my head where my mother dropped my as a baby.
I've very disappointed in my paltry, non-surgical scars.
Scar on my elbow from a weeping willow branch fight.
Small scar on my lip from when I decided that it would be a good idea to tie my dog's leash to my bike's handle bars and let him pull me.
Oops. Forgot one.
Small scar on a knuckle on my right hand from a monkey bite.
shivbunny has scars all over his hands and forearms mostly from various work accidents.
One thing that was initially weird to me in academia is people don't have these. I've got tons of little ones on hands, wrists, forearms, from wrenching and a few from kitchens. At one time pretty much everyone I knew had these.
Small scar on my thumb from a youthful headcatcher mishap.
A slight indentation in my scalp (not visible under my hair) from a hematoma I got in a car accident when a fundamentalist preacher driving on the wrong side of the road hit me head on.
34: And their teeth! The first recognition I had about class differences was when I realized my Boston-bred college boyfriend had perfect teeth not because he was fortunate, but because they were made so. Mine are working-class teeth.
30: A sense of satisfaction and pride, in fact.
My knuckles are all scarred and scary looking, because I used to punch a lot of walls (not in anger; I saw Iron and Silk at an impressionable age and thought the Iron Palm dude who hit a piece of steel a thousand time a day was totally badass (well, sometimes in anger (I broke my hand on a doorframe, that was in anger (you should've seen the door, though!)))).
I had Johnny Rotten / Shane MacGowen teeth for a long time. Now I have toothless old man teeth.
You lost your virginity in an unreleased David Lynch film, I'm guessing?
good one. And thanks for answering, it would have been depressing if one of my few vaguely-interesting stories didn't even get a nibble.
The night itself did have Lynchian overtones, but the virginity thing happened because I was laid up for some time at my friend's place with nothing to do but hit on his roommate. Eventually, I talked her into relieving me of my virginity, in part by selling myself as a good and experienced lover. That worked out predictably well.
38: NOBODY INSULT A BOSTON TEAM EVER AGAIN.
I'm actually kind of amazed I have as few scars as I do. They're almost all on my forearms, elbows and knees:
- A long scar on the outside my right forearm near the elbow from one fall when I kept having to lay out for the disc every single frisbee practice, reopening the same deep scrape over and over. Also knee scars from our winter practices on astroturf, which was horrible for quick turns and would rip skin open on any fall.
- Small scratches on the inside of my left forearm from when I drunkenly climbed to the third storey of a rough cement dorm building. Surprisingly, nothing from the 3-storey fall that my friends claim I took afterward.
- A couple white scars on my right palm from when I jumped out of a slow-moving train without dropping off my 20-lb backpack first, stumbling onto sharp gravel on my hands and knees.
A couple white scars on my right palm from when I jumped out of a slow-moving train without dropping off my 20-lb backpack first, stumbling onto sharp gravel on my hands and knees.
Nice to know the kids are keeping this tradition alive. Did you see "Into the Wild"?
Eventually, I talked her into relieving me of my virginity, in part by selling myself as a good and experienced lover. That worked out predictably well.
Ha. I lied in order to get rid of my virginity, too. The sex was horrible, but, as I found out when we hooked up again five years later, the horribleness of the sex wasn't my fault.
Mine are working-class teeth.
That too.
because I used to punch a lot of walls
That brings back a painful-to-watch memory. I knew a guy, a hard kid with a real temper. Anyway, he and his girlfriend got in a fight, he punched a wall in anger and snapped two or three metacarpals.
So they put his hand back together and put pins in to keep the bones straight as they healed. After the bandages and splint came off, he had a pin sticking out of the skin between his 1st and 2nd knuckle .... you know where this is going, right? I guess weeks later he got to the point he didn't think about it any more. Sure enough, we're all at a party and his ex-girlfriend shows up. They're fighting and drift outside. I go to try and cool things down, but he loses it and punches the brick wall with his still busted hand. Right after he does it we all get quiet and he just sort of looks over at me and I knew it was bad. I'll never forget that look.
A couple white scars on my right palm
I got dirt and gravel driven into the skin of my palms when I made my first paragliding landing in a rocky, sandy parking lot rather than the grassy landing zone I was supposed to aim for. Took several weeks for the stuff to work its way out.
All sorts of small scars due to burns and cuts of various sorts.
Eyebrow scar: an inch and a half long just under and parallel to my eyebrow and created last year when I did a face-plant on the kitchen floor, jamming the upper rim of my (metal) glasses against my eye socket. Tons of blood, 18 stitches and a hell of a black eye.
A short but deep scar between 2 toes from doing a cartwheel in the living room when I was 11, and whacking my foot into the corner of the coffee-table. Hey, that was a little embarrassing.
Lately I've been re-noticing a 2-inch long scar across the palm of my hand, pretty faint now. I can't remember how it happened, but I remember having walked around for, seemingly, weeks with a haphazard arrangment of bandaids over it: a long slice across the palm. It runs exactly perpendicular to what I think is my lifeline on my palm. Right across it! Oh dear!
43: Nah, I was actually just taking a commuter train out to the suburbs to meet the friends I was going camping with. I got to the train station quite early, and the train that was on the right set of tracks, labeled with the right destination, turned out to be the wrong train (with one door left open). When it left the station ten minutes early and no one else was aboard, I put two and two together, panicked, and used the manual override on one of the doors to jump out in front of a large number of very surprised Chicago drivers just north of Union Station.
Made my train, though.
I have a 3 inch gash on my left ankle incurred during the 2004 tsunami. We were in Phuket at a hotel on the beach when the first wave came, survived all of those safely, eventually, on the roof of our hotel and got to higher ground, even managed to find a new place to stay. Husband convinced me to go back down to the hotel area the next day to see if we could retrieve passports in the hotel safe. Wading through water knee deep, totally opaque disgusting water, I was having the thought of what a bad idea this was when I gashed my ankle on something. Managed to get it up out of the no doubt corpse filled water immediately and got carried back inland with some random person's sock wrapped around it.
Husband did retrieve passports later that day though.
45: holy fucking ow. That's horrifying.
I have a good friend who broke his hand (in many places) on Oleg Taktarov's head. Oleg has quite a hard head, apparently.
36: shivbunny's teeth are still a disaster-area. Genetics and stupid well water with no fluoride. He doesn't seem to care, but they drive me crazy.
Ha. I lied in order to get rid of my virginity, too.
If you don't mind sharing, was this a "Of course I've done it lots of times" kind of lie, or a "I'll always love you, and I want this to be so special" kind of lie, or a "It's OK, I'll just squeeze it here between my thighs" kind of lie?
45: I got a sharp twinge of pain in my knuckle when I read that.
He doesn't seem to care, but they drive me crazy.
Just out of curiosity, why ?
I got a sharp twinge of pain in my knuckle when I read that.
Then take my advice and don't go back and read the older scar thread with the stories of testicular torsion / amputation.
oh, and tell me i'm not the only one here with scars intentionally inflicted by other people?
52: I don't know if I flat-out lied, but I definitely led him to believe I was not actually a virgin. I was experienced enough that I didn't feel that I was a virgin in any meaningful sense.
I definitely led him to believe I was not actually a virgin
I'll bet you're still using that ruse, aren't you?
Crossposted from PZ's place:
"I've got a small scar on my chin, although it's mostly faded away in the last couple of years. I got it celebrating Oxford United's escape from relegation in 2000. I'd been drinking absinthe during a Junior Common Room meeting. Walking back to my room with the absinthe bottle, I stumbled on the kerb. Being drunk and a bit stupid, I decided that preserving the bottle was more important than preserving me, and fell chin first on the cobbled street. Didn't break the bottle, though."
Also, it's not really a scar, but I've got a crevasse in my right temple from when a metal hammock stand (with my brother in the hammock) fell on my head when I was about seven.
I was experienced enough that I didn't feel that I was a virgin in any meaningful sense.
A survey examining sexual practices of U.S. teens has undercut the notion that many engage in oral sex rather than intercourse to stay "technically" virgins, researchers said on Tuesday.
One smack dab in the middle of my forehead from crashing into a marble table when I was 2 or 3. Another that runs the length of my index finger from a discovery around that age, in the child seat on the back of mom's bike, that the spokes don't really disappear when the bike is moving. One on the back of the same hand from when the little boy who sat next to me in 5th grade stabbed me with his mechanical pencil (because he liked me, according to his sister years later). The rest of my scars are emotional.
61: Yeah, I hear they're all using anal for that purpose now.
55: "It feels like someone kicked me in the rocks and never took their foot away!"
54: Couple reasons. One, typical middle-class American kneejerk classist reaction. Two, aside from my dad, everyone in my family has unusually healthy teeth. Not all in perfect alignment, but, like, one cavity among four kids. Three, I know what it costs once all the teeth have to be root-canaled and retooled (dad) and it scares the shit out of me that shivbunny has these problems twenty years earlier than my dad did. What if he ends up with no teeth?
If you don't mind sharing, was this a "Of course I've done it lots of times" kind of lie,
Yes. Complete with pretended swagger and made-up stories. I had barely even kissed a girl before. Two minutes in, she turned to me with a weird look and said "are you sure you've done this before?". It sort of went downhill from there.
66: Ah, I guess there's a difference between alignment issues, and actually needing work. I don't get the obsession with locking in an implausible smile with retainers. Needing real reconstructive work done though, is a really a different issue.
I've been lucky with the latter (one filling, ever, that I've since been told probably didn't need to be done) but alignment functional (good bite) but not pretty. I knew a guy who had a ton of trouble with his though, really painful. He ended up having three flare badly up and a couple more iffy while in jail. They give you pretty lousy dental care options, so he just opted to have all the ones he had left yanked and get falsies. He was I think 28 at the time.
are you sure you've done this before?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That's delightful.
The only scars I have are cat-inflicted. Stupid cats.
At this point in my sexual life, I find the game is more about hoping that my skilz in bed are such that the values of having had a number of variously depraved previous partners outweighs the "OMG where did she learn that?" anxiety. For one of the guys I dated last year, the latter outweighed the former over time. Not like he thought I was a slut, but that it became apparent that I had a wider repertoire and it eventually made him feel inadequate, which was sad and not an intention of mine at all.
69: His teeth are a lot more like the latter. He had one abscess about two months after the wedding, and they had to pull the tooth, which shattered when they tried to pull it, &c., &c.
68: Yeah, but it's all minor I've got a little "x" from a ring that a mustache would hide, a few assorted cuts/tears on my head from heavy things, a couple of knife things, a pellet or two from a near miss, and bits of something came off a wall in another one. Probably a couple I'm forgetting.
I meant, sure I get the sense that my teens were not bog-standard for unfogged... But seriously, nobody even had school-yard fight that came to grief, or a sibiling that through a dart at them or anything?
71: my ideal romantic partner is a really freaky, formerly somewhat sluttish type who is tired of playing around and wants to settle down now. Just like me. I have no double standard.
What if he ends up with no teeth?
Then he would become shivgummy.
As a father, I frequently reflect on the fact that I am f-ing lucky to have survived childhood with no major injuries or scars. I never even broke a bone. This despite an almost total lack of adult supervision, and a penchant for playing with extremely dangerous things.
At various times, my friends and I amused ourselves with firearms of various types and calibres, live ammunition, 2,4,5-T, black powder, homemade chlorine gas, chainsaws, tractors, molotov cocktails, acetylene blowtorches, hydraulic lift equipment, blasting caps, machetes, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, and a homemade flamethrower.
On occasion, we indulged in these amusements while while impaired by alchohol and/or drugs.
Sometimes I wonder how I survived to adulthood.
Mine are working-class teeth.
The only really pretty girl I saw in Brazil smiled at me - revealing bad teeth. Not awful, actually, but it was jarring on a young woman with a pretty face.
I got over it well enough for some serious necking later in the day.
78: Your punishment is imagining the things your kids are getting up to while you are not around.
We did some pretty stupid stuff too.
73: boy I really would like to hear more about your teens. I suspect I have, but still.
I have a scar on my knee from where I fell off a skateboard in a parking lot and scraped it on the asphalt. That was probably a better outcome than running into the parked cars I was headed for. I was seated instead of standing on the skateboard, so it wasn't too bad.
I used to have a scar on the back of one of my legs from when a doctor dug around with a scalpel to dig out the remains of a tick, but I think it's no longer visible.
Lovely hook-shape on my left index finger, from slicing limes for G&Ts. Small line on my right upper arm from a guy's fingernail, for no good reason. Mild acne scars on shoulders. Nearly invisible divot on my face, under the beard, from this one time when I fell playing hockey, and this kid tried to spray me with ice but slipped and drove his skate through my right cheek. Still have nightmares about that.
Guns, drugs, and explosives are pretty damn fun in combination.
81: It makes a bizarre contrast with life today sometimes.
73 - many schoolyard fights, none of which have left scars....ON ME!
are you sure you've done this before?
I was fooling around with a woman once in college and realized that she clearly hadn't - the clumsiness was glaring. I was really alarmed because the weekend had started out with mutual interest, but by then had just become, for me, a bit of fun. We weren't going to screw anyway (both Catholic), but if I'd known she was 20 without any experience, I wouldn't've even fooled around - at least not without discussion. I still wonder how she ended up feeling about that (we talked a few times after, but never enough to discuss that incident).
many schoolyard fights, none of which have left scars....ON ME!
Didn't your mom tell you not to pick on the little kids?
re: 56
See 5. Although the inflicting of scars wasn't their primary aim, obviously.
shivbunny got into many fights as a youngster but generally avoided being cut.
ah, missed that somehow ttaM. Trust the scots to make me feel at home then.
The only really pretty girl I saw in Brazil smiled at me - revealing bad teeth.
The Slovak girl who used to clean our apartment was like that: tall, slender, beautiful blond, with a mouth full of tetracycline teeth. It was quite jarring.
ogged,
that I got when I put my hand through a plate-glass door in a fit of pique when I was four or five.
Wow. I've got two smaller scars on my wrist that happened a similar way. I was chasing my sister and she shut the screen door behind her and I put my hand through the glass trying to open the door.
This was in about '66, so it was before the new safety glass requirements. The scars look like either the bite marks from a very large venomous snake or a really really wimpy suicide attempt.
I blame my parents who opted to close the wounds with butterfly bandages instead of getting me stitched up, but back then money was tight and a trip to the Doctor required a lot more than a couple one inch cuts.
should add the 2 cm long string like white scar on my left palm, right in the center along the life line, forgot how i got it though
plus the smallpox vaccine scar too
89: what if I meant shotguns of lesser quality?
re: 93
Had a knife pulled on me twice, but neither time, I think, did they really intend to use it. I didn't push it, anyway.
92: Yeah,my comment wasn't that this was a likely outcome, as schoolyard stuff doesn't tend to be serious, But it happens, even if as likely by accident as by intent. I've seen some pretty impressive scars produced just by goofing around and/or roughhousing, not actual fighting or whatever.
Sifu,
Guns, drugs, and explosives are pretty damn fun in combination.
heh heh. Famous redneck last words: "Hey, watch this!"
No offense meant of course.
I've made other people bleed, but I don't think I've scarred them. I had somebody put a match out on my arm, but I can't remember if that left a scar, and wouldn't know how to find it among the rest of 'em.
98: Both times I was cut it was breaking up somebody elses fight, go figure. I've had a couple of situations like you mention, no real intent. Oh, and one with real intent by my friend brained him with a 40oz bottle before he was anywhere close (a good thing too, I was dead drunk).
100: being neither a redneck nor dead, none taken.
oh, and tell me i'm not the only one here with scars intentionally inflicted by other people?
They're mostly faded and small, but I've still got scars on my hands from my sister scratching me.
Regarding scars in schoolyard fights, it seems a non-issue really. Most of them in my experience consisted of a lot of pushing and namecalling, stomach-punching and various submission holds. On the occasions when I managed to smack a guy in the nose, that usually ended it even for the biggest and meanest. Later experience with bars and such suggests that this is actually a pretty common fight paradigm in the US. But unfogged has a number of fight threads that have probably resolved this pressing manliness issue already.
Oh, wait, shivbunny does have a small scar on his chest from where a girlfriend stabbed him. [Beat.] It was an accident, she was pretending to threaten him and he was in a rocking chair and so ended leaning into the knife, but still a good story.
Oh, and I got whaled on the back of the head with a Snapple bottle pretty good once - can't tell if there's a scar, though. Some teenages trying to mug me, presumably figuring that I'd go down when hit. Instead I stumbled and ran right past them. Once I was about 2 blocks away I turned to manfully call out "Hey, what the fuck!" as they vanished into the Jersey City night.
But seriously, nobody even had school-yard fight that came to grief, or a sibiling that through a dart at them or anything?
This surely doesn't count, even by local standards, but I have a half-inch or so graphite streak clearly visible several mm below the surface of my right palm, the result of a jr. high fight in drafting class involving very sharp pencils. Faded some, but not much, in the 25 years since.
re: 101
Yeah, someone stubbed a cigarette out deliberately on my hand, in a crowded bar. Sufficiently crowded that I never actually worked out who it was, either.
Famous redneck last words: "Hey, watch this!"
Fucking yankees, can't even get their put-downs right.
The canonical version is, "Hey y'all, lookee here!"
you know, this is one of those threads that makes me think that for someone who has basically been pretty consistently anti-violence I seem to have managed to get mixed up in an inordinate amount of it at times. But someone above is right, we don't need to revisit those threads.
On topic:
I used to have impressive cyclists shins (the little scars from pedals swinging back to smack your shin) but they're hard to see now.
oh yeah! I forgot the razor wire fence. I've got roughly parallel lines on my left forearm from going over one of those.
111: I have dinged up shins, partly from that and partly from martial arts. (Most painful drill ever: stand across from a partner, both kick three across your body with the left leg so that your shins contact. Then do the same with the right leg. Repeat.)
Speaking of teeth, didn't aristocratic women in feudal Japan blacken their teeth as a matter of course? When I last watched Throne of Blood, it creeped me the hell out.
I'm pretty sure I still have a bump and a scar on the back of my head from when an admirer in the fourth or fifth grade threw a rock at me.
My most noticable scar is a dent and a gash about three inches long across my right quadracep. I fell into a storm drain while running after a boy I had a crush on. In my defense, the storm drain was full of water at the time and looked just like a normal puddle. Still, I had a gigantic bruise for about three weeks and was lucky not to have broken my leg.
Every year I gather about two or three little mosquito bite scars. I manage to salve most of them but just HAVE to scratch a few into bloody messes. They don't fade as quickly as they did when I was younger, so I'm really going to have to rethink this practice. Mosquitos fucking love me.
111: Yeah, those never really left lasting scars on me. It's difficult to tell though, since I tend to get pretty light scarring and the leg hair covers most of it up.
I really am amazed that most people make it through their teenage and college years with so few scars, considering how easy they are to pick up once you start doing anything fun.
Man, some of you people make me feel literally covered in scars. I haven't even mentioned my two biggest (or at least, most noticeable) scars. I don't think it would even begin to occur to me that a mosquito bite (even one you scratched) would leave a scar.
It's kind of surprising that no one has tried the old "your navel is a scar, you know" bit, which usually came up in discussions about scars in grade school.
I haven't even mentioned my two biggest (or at least, most noticeable) scars.
No, those are your ears.
113, 116: I received a lot dings on the shin from rugby. No scars, but if I run my finger along the shin it is quite bumpy. (But maybe this is just what happens when you got older, independent of geting whacked, I am not currently at a place where I can run my fingers along anyone's shin with a more sentient lifewstyle to test.)
121: I am not currently at a place where I can run my fingers along anyone's shin with a more sentient lifewstyle to test
Look, I agree Rugby players are stupid, but they're at least minimally sentient.
I have a 3 inch gash on my left ankle incurred during the 2004 tsunami. We were in Phuket at a hotel on the beach when the first wave came, survived all of those safely, [bunch of crazy stuff].
Holy smokes, sybil. You are crazy. Do you have pictures? Post them!!!
116: Lots of twisted ankles and other joint injuries, and bruises, but I generally didn't break the skin in a way that scarred.
I don't think it would even begin to occur to me that a mosquito bite (even one you scratched) would leave a scar.
I am pale with thin, sensitive skin. The mosquito bite scars end up being vermillion and about the size of dimes.
However! I just realized that I lied in my earlier post; my most noticable scars have got to be my stretch marks. Fucking stretch marks. The ones along my hip flexxors still look like jagged lightning strikes. I am beginning to accept that they will never ever fade.
122: Yeah, what the fuck was I thinking of? Aargh, I am Gerald Ford.
It just occurred to me that I'd completely forgotten about head scars from having been hit by a car in 3rd grade: tossed 10 feet up in the air and landed on my head. Scar at my left temple, a couple along my lower lip, and at the back of my skull (hair still doesn't grow from that spot back there, as hair cutters are always careful to tell me).
Stretch makes, JM?!?! Arent you all of 100 pounds and never had a baby?
||
Your government at work...Mike Enzi on the floor of the senate right now:
Today's cowboys continue to rope and ride their way across the United States.... They indubitably improve our way of life.
|>
128.---I've had 'em since I was about 14, when I rather rapidly become the size I am today. I've heard that having or not having stretch marks is mostly a genetic matter.
My honey has a couple of very faint ones on his ass. But then I think that most people do.
Arent you all of 100 pounds and never had a baby?
I'm guessing she went through puberty, though.
132 is a joke, right? You do know that stretch marks often show up over the course of puberty? (Despite their being called "pregnancy streaks" in German.)
Female problem, Stras. Don't ask.
122, 126: Sentient s/b sedentary. Jesus, exile me to the old thread.
My most identifiable scar is one on my right cheek, about 1.5" long. I was six or seven, we were out of Coke, and mom told me I could drink some of her Sugar Free Dr. Pepper. It was in one of those 32oz glass bottles they don't make anymore, with a smooth, tapered top, which was the only place I could hold it. I couldn't get a very good grip on the smooth glass though, and it slipped from my hands and exploded when it hit the floor. She scooped me up, loaded me into the car, and rushed to the hospital. When my sister got home from school the garage door was open, the door from the house to the garage was open, and there was a trail of blood going from the puddle in the kitchen out to the garage. I think the memory of that still creeps her out.
Sometimes when people ask about it and I feel like messing with their heads, I tell them my father was a sword maker and one day a six-fingered man came to ask him to make a sword. Surprisingly some people let me get all the way through that version of the story without recognizing it.
I also have two scars you can't see unless you know they're there: one just below my lower lip where my sister kicked out my four front teeth with an ill-timed front walkover; one on my chin where I split it open in a fall while ice skating and trying to avoid a small child who fell in front of me. That one actually chipped off a bit of bone, leaving my chin slightly asymmetrical.
I also have one 2" long cumulative scar on my right shin, partly from an ill-timed attempt to cross a street in Heidelberg on my bicycle that ended with me under the bumper of a Volvo station wagon, partly from repeatedly stepping out the back door of my old house without remembering to open the storm door, which had long been without glass (so I'd catch my shins on the bottom part of the frame). I think there might even be one other injury in that same spot. Clumsiness runs in the family.
I'm guessing she went through puberty, though.
Let's not get carried away with reckless conjecture, OK Blume?
Speaking of the old thread, now Byrd is giving a speech in his totally inimitable style on the floor. First breaking down in tears over Ted Kennedy, now inveighing against the war in Iraq. "How long, oh Lord, how long?". In a reedy, quavering voice that keeps breaking and makes it seem like he could die at any moment. Which in fact, he could.
Being Robert Byrd is a good role for an old person.
First breaking down in tears over Ted Kennedy
A malignant brain tumor. Ouch.
134: I was just shocked that you would so cavalierly assume Jackmormon is post-pubescent.
It's kind of surprising that no one has tried the old "your navel is a scar, you know" bit, which usually came up in discussions about scars in grade school.
Along those lines (so to speak,) one could consider the perineal raphe a scar as well.
I didn't want to go through puberty, but nature would not be denied.
In a reedy, quavering voice that keeps breaking and makes it seem like he could die at any moment. Which in fact, he could.
The fact that Byrd knows he won't make it through another election cycle will, I hope, liberate him to stretch the rhetoric in the Senate caucus toward harsher condemnation of the war and its authors.
As recently as two years ago, Byrd was voting for Bush's SCOTUS nominees whose views on executive power ought to be anathema to the president pro tem, for reasons that I can only guess were election-related (WTF? He wanted to win by 35 points instead of 30?)
His final major accomplishment needs to be getting his former chief of staff elected in West Virginia's 2nd CD, so that the execreble Shelley Moore Capito is not in a position to win Byrd's seat when he dies.
137: partly from repeatedly stepping out the back door of my old house without remembering to open the storm door, which had long been without glass (so I'd catch my shins on the bottom part of the frame)
I'm really feeling this, for some reason. Have I done something like it myself? Dunno, but man, I just see it now: by the time I did that again for the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th time, I'd be screaming out "FUUUUCK! God fucking DAMMIT!!" at every iteration. Ouch ouch ouch.
Pardon my language.
You've got it about right. This was also a door I rarely used, so I had plenty of time to forget about the storm door between uses.
I'm guessing she went through puberty, though.
I learned about puberty from your books, Judy.
But, you failed to discuss stretch marks.
Of course, I learned about the fallopian tubes before I learned about puberty.
re: 113
Yeah, they did drills like that when I did karate. I'm glad I wear shin pads now. Once hard-tipped shoes get into the equation [s /avate] it's too painful otherwise.
You people make me feel pure and pristine. I have no non-surgical scars, though not out of avoiding cuts over the years. I think I've been in one serious fight in my life (serious as in both parties seriously engaged, not as in dangerous).
I do have some medium-sized albino patches on my belly (both skin and hair completely white). I think I was born with them.
The only scar of mine that I'm particularly aware of is the c-section scar, and even there it's not the scar itself but the horrible pouch of loose skin that hangs over it. Ah well.
I blame my parents who opted to close the wounds with butterfly bandages instead of getting me stitched up, but back then money was tight and a trip to the Doctor required a lot more than a couple one inch cuts.
Your poor parents.
Sybil and PGD win the thread, btw.
Maybe if Sybil had posted pictures from the devastation. Since she hasnt, she should be disqualified.
parsimon and i have the same left eyebrow scar. maybe we need a secret handshake now. it did most definitely bleed enormous quantities of blood and result in a spectacular swollen black eye. (i got 32 stitches, but that was because it was deep enough to hit the bone, and also the hospital had me done up by a plastic surgeon, at 1am, for which i am profoundly grateful).
ah, head wounds. my other major scar is on the face, too. from when i accidentally put a hole through the side of my chin as a 4 or 5 year old. that makes eating a rather interesting process (i was using nothing but a straw for two weeks).
Rub it in, B.
Does she have an anti-wealth fetish?
A) One scar, on the eyebrow, from being kicked by my sister at age 10. And on the shin, from being cut by a standpipe when diving for a football. Both were about five stitches.
B) I am sad to see that our days of masturbating to Ted Kennedy are numbered.
And on the shin, from being cut by a standpipe when diving for a football.
It's big of you not to hold it against him.
i followed the yes we did link and there i found the closed book recommendations bleg thread, just wanted to suggest my faves
last week i read Molloy, now reading Malone dies
it's really stretching my vocab, i like how all the sentences are so short and funny
also i would suggest The Counterfeiters, and The White guard, Bulgakov's, though all are translations
and they were not mentioned in the thread
but maybe you already read it all
I flaunt my koi and my health insurance in Tripp's parents' faces.
Actually I'll be taking PK to the eye doctor on Friday and paying *out of pocket* b/c we don't have vision coverage yet, and he's way way too freaked out about his farsightedness to wait until we do.
Of course, because I am a good parent, I can afford to do this.
Can I just say, by the way, that for ages I thought (and was I wrong?) that "Auto-banned" was a floating pseud that people would use when they said something outrageously offensive or whatever, and it's only fairly recently that I've realized it's actually someone's standard pseudonym?
Luckily I'm not LB, or I'd insist you change it.
My guess is that Tripp's parents' reasoning was more like "What did he do a damfool thing like that for???!!"
I have a scar on my left wrist from smashing through the window of the front door when I was about six. My uncle was out there dressed as Santa Claus.
Another scar of sorts is on my leg, from where my brother threw a pencil at me that pierced my jeans and my flesh, leaving a tiny blue dot to this day.
And on my left forearm, there is a scar from where I was stabbed in San Jose, Costa Rica.
I have many little scars on my fingers from X-Acto knife related woodcarving accidents from my youth. Also, if you look closely, the tops of both my forearms are basically a continuous mass of very fine and faded scars from mosquito bite scratching. Then there's the small circular scar on the underside of my left forearm that is the result of drunkenly putting a cigarette out on myself. (It's really not smart to give a 14 year-old a copy of G. Gordon Liddy's autobiography, Will, if you don't want things like that to happen a few years down the road.) But other than that, not too many scars, despite a childhood full of illicit firecrackers, small fires, and playing with knives.
161: I think you were right about that. But it seems like nobody else uses it anymore.
One of my brothers had two non-functioning joints on the first finger of one hand. He had been struggling with another brother for possession of a knife.
163: a scar from where I was stabbed in San Jose
Ooo, don't you hate it when you get stabbed there? It really stings.
He had been struggling with another brother for possession of a knife.
Thinning the herd.
I meant, sure I get the sense that my teens were not bog-standard for unfogged... But seriously, nobody even had school-yard fight that came to grief, or a sibiling that through a dart at them or anything?
Only those from Scotland.
I don't think I've ever even seen a fight, school-yard or otherwise.
My father tried to prove the existence of the external world to my Buddhist brother by stubbing a cigarette into his arm. My brother re-disproved the existence of the external world by stubbing out a different cigarette on the same arm. Samuel Johnson wouldn't have won his argument in my family.
I have no scars of any interest, except toothlessness. I have a fair number of smallish marks, but no stories behind them.
Ooo, don't you hate it when you get stabbed there? It really stings.
I read you were shot three times in the tabloids.
smashing through the window of the front door when I was about six. My uncle was out there dressed as Santa Claus.
Wait, what's the cause/effect here?
it seems like nobody else uses it anymore.
Because you've taken it over! You've privatized public property!
174 was me and a joke I don't want to get in trouble I didn't mean it somebody else did it look a fire gotta go
Because you've taken it over! You've privatized public property!
It was blighted and abandoned. Squatters should get property rights if their occupancy isn't questioned after five years or so.
Scar on my left ankle, from being dragged behind a car with a loop of barbed wire wrapped around my foot.
I want to hear the story behind this.
I just questioned your occupancy, and it ain't been five years.
Y'know, come to think of it, I don't think I even have visible stretch marks any more. But! This biking and yoga shit? Is like giving me muscle tone again? And the goddamn main effect of it is to make the hangy belly skin look *even worse* because it's not filled up with nicely rounding fat any more.
Fucking exercise, I knew it sucked.
am,
brain cancer, two people i know of have brain tumor
one is my very distant relative now in coma in Beijing and the dutch friend's mother, her treatment is pretty effective he said
maybe there is an epidemic of brain cancer going on, cell phones etc
178: A year at Unfogged is like a lifetime for normal human beings. It's like dog years.
177: it plays better enigmatic. You already heard how I lost my virginity.
Besides, I already won the thread. My first thread win!
I'd like to thank all the folks who stuck by me and didn't lose faith during those trying days defending Hillary Clinton. B, who can recognize a quality scarring incident even when it happens to a sexist. I knew she wouldn't reward all that cheesy macho talk about brawling-related scars.
And Ogged...what can I say, buddy? It's your movie, I'm just playing a bit part. I hope today I've justified a little of the potential you saw in me when I was just another random troll.
I know I've left out a lot of people, a lot of the little people...you're important to me too! Believe it!
And the goddamn main effect of it is to make the hangy belly skin look *even worse* because it's not filled up with nicely rounding fat any more.
I have this problem. I've lost about 60 lbs and I keep going through phases were I tend to look flabbier after I would lose some weight until my skin would adjust. Luckily so far my skin has adjusted it just lags a while.
181: Hell of a time for you to start getting enigmatic, innit.
I'm working on becoming more enigmatic, it would really help my game.
But I'm not sure who won the thread after seeing 170...that's like a combination of Hume and The Great Santini.
151: B
Your poor parents.
Good one!
Not that anyone cares but B and I go back aways and I take no offense from her, but don't tell her that.
Also growing up poor, although not exactly really poor, gave me some good things. Empathy. A certain amount of understanding and compassion. My parents are ashamed of what they could not give me but they really did the best they could and they did the best with what they had and they were and are good parents.
I'm working on becoming more enigmatic, it would really help my game.
Don't force it, or you'll end up with an enigma tic.
Actually I'll be taking PK to the eye doctor on Friday and paying *out of pocket* b/c we don't have vision coverage yet, and he's way way too freaked out about his farsightedness to wait until we do.
Quite probably inaccurately, I find that I think of vision insurance as a rather exotic super-deluxe bonus insurance.
B, Tripp totally took offense at what you said.
'Were he to resign or die in office, state law requires a special election for the seat no sooner than 145 days and no later than 160 days after the vacancy occurs.'
how cruel, the reporter maybe just states the facts but still it's soo strange to say this in the news, when he is still just newly diagnosed, shocking
maybe there is an epidemic of brain cancer going on, cell phones etc
Between comments like this and her enthusiasm for selenium supplements to ward off cancer, I am somewhere between amused and disconcerted that read is apparently an actual, factual scientist engaged in cancer research.
"We're doing really fascinating work right now on using phlogiston to inhibit vasculogenesis in certain classes of tumours. The original experiments showed no improvement over the control group, but subsequent review of data shows that research subjects with a genetic marker for an imbalance of black bile may respond to the treatment. We're trying to design a rigorously clinical trial, but we are frustrated by our inability to control for the effects of the alignment of celestial bodies."
oh, it was the other thread, my apologies
but there are studies on the long term use of the cell phones and brain cancer, though the meta-analyses all like refuted it
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17409179?ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
still better to err on the side of caution
i can provide the selenium links if you'd like
Quite probably inaccurately, I find that I think of vision insurance as a rather exotic super-deluxe bonus insurance
Your supposition of inaccuracy is correct. "Vision Plans" are not insurance in any normal actuarial sense, nor are they really like employee health benefits, where the coverage is unavailable to non-employees and the employer subsidizes the coverage.
The vision plan business model is a brilliant business model that works like this. The vision plan offers your empoyer a nice-sounding benefit ("vision coverage") for next to no employer contribution. For the employer, there's no downside. If you or a family member wear glasses, you sign up; if not, you don't. This adverse selection effect is fully expected and priced into the plan. You pay for the coverage via payroll deduction. When it comes time to get an eye exam or buy glasses or contacts, the plan document is written in such a way that you have no choice but to go to an "in-network" provider.
Guess what: The provider and the network are the same company. "What?" you say. "I have a choice of leading brands! I can go to Pearl Vision, or I can go to LensCrafters. Or I can go to Target Optical or Sears Optical."
Guess what: it's all the same company.
"Well," you say, "At least my plan allows me to pay a small additional co-pay and get great sunglasses, like Persol or Oakley."
Guess what: it's all the same company.
In essence, the vision care plan is a mechanism for Luxottica to sell you eyeglasses via payroll deduction provide you with eye exams at a contracted price. That doesn't make it a bad deal, by the way. It's just not a gold-plated benefit. And individuals can purchase the coverage for themselves, FWIW.
It's also possible that brain cancer causes cell phone use.
Your supposition of inaccuracy is correct. "Vision Plans" are not insurance in any normal actuarial sense, nor are they really like employee health benefits, where the coverage is unavailable to non-employees and the employer subsidizes the coverage.
Ah, right. I believe that part of why I think it's exotic is that every plan of this sort that has ever been offered to me did not look worth the money, and so I mentally discount it.
Guess what: The provider and the network are the same company. "What?" you say. "I have a choice of leading brands! I can go to Pearl Vision, or I can go to LensCrafters. Or I can go to Target Optical or Sears Optical."
My vision plan at two different employers came not from EyeMed but from VSP. It would probably pay for cheap lenses just fine, but I've been past the point of cheap lenses since 7th grade. So for me it wasn't a super-duper benefit but it did knock down the price of my stupidly expensive high index progressive lenses, and one employer had the "computer vision" add-on that got me an additional fitting and reading glasses for mostly free (I paid a supplement for my cool frames).
I'm self-employed now and paying for vision coverage, but I should probably drop it. It seems even less of a benefit than I had with VSP.
Eyeglass pricing is so screwy. The customized, high-precision portion of the eyeglasses, the lens, ground on the spot by a skilled craftsman, is cheap. Ugly frames are cheap. Tiny decrements of hideousness and manufacturing shoddiness cause the frame price to double, up to the point where a well made frame that includes small springs for the earpieces costs as much as an automatic weapon. Why?
I have no coverage, but I've been surprised at how cheap glasses and exams are, and how much better the glasses are than they used to be. I have the titanium frames and the antiscratch plastic lenses, and my glasses are much more durable than they were 15 years ago, and not terribly expensive. I go to a small local firm which I recommend: Hendrix adn McGuire by the Portland Public Library.
I will return to my grumbly self.
I
Eyeglass pricing is so screwy.
No, it's not. Like airline pricing, it is exquisitely designed to extract the last penny of consumer surplus out of customers at every price point, and to ring-fence customers with high ability to pay from buying a cheaper product.
The customized, high-precision portion of the eyeglasses, the lens, ground on the spot by a skilled craftsman, is cheap
This description of the skill involved in grinding lenses hasn't been true for at least a decade. It's not as simple as frying burgers, but it's not far off.
Tiny decrements of hideousness and manufacturing shoddiness cause the frame price to double, up to the point where a well made frame that includes small springs for the earpieces costs as much as an automatic weapon. Why?
See response 1 above. This price discrimination is reinforced by the business system that vertically integrates manufacturing, licensing, customization, and distribution, all bound together by the payroll deduction system to bind you to your choice of provider.
so the Se links, there are a lot, pubmed gives like 192 reviews, so i'll post only this one
http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/full/23/2/333
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Clinical_Oncology
200.1 is so very true. I broke my frames last year and wasn't sure whether I could get exact replacements, so I shopped around. There's a cool place with cool glasses near my girlfriend's evening job, so I went in there to look around. Frames (awesome frames, I must say) and Zeiss lenses came to $800. They don't take anybody's insurance, either. Sam's Club sells the same Zeiss lenses for $140/pair. I won't ever be shopping at the cool place.
But damn, those frames looked cool.
Just go to 39dollarglasses.com and quit bitching about "but it doesn't go with my face!!"
That site is funny. You can print an actual sized picture of your glasses selection from a pdf-- presumably to cut them out and approximate how they'd look on your face?
My place had OK looking frames in the $200 range. Slaves of fashion can bite me.
Costco is good for eyeglasses and frames. Reasonably fashionable*, too.
*Yeah, yeah, I know, consider the source, blah blah. But seriously! Cute frames! My mother thinks they make me look like a professor!
I found a place in the UK that lets you email in a prescription. They have all the big name frames. I presume the same service is common in the US. I saved around $200 equivalent over the same pair with the same lenses in the cheapest local shop.
Costco is good for eyeglasses and frames. Reasonably fashionable*
My roommate keeps mentioning this, and I keep pooh-poohing the idea without having checked it out. I rather somewhat desperately need new glasses and dread the thought of a $600 cost. And I don't (yet) have a straightforward prescription I can simply hand them -- I'm doing this weird 'monovision' thing with my contacts, the prescription for the right eye slightly stronger than it needs to be, the left slightly weaker. I doubt this is appropriate for glasses themselves.
How long can I avoid taking care of this? Months, so far, it seems!
I bought two pairs of eyeglasses, including lenses with the high-index plastic & anti reflective coating, for $300. It took about a week and a half for the order to come in.
209: Wow. I'll check it out. I assume these weren't bifocals or progressive lenses. To be honest, I feel badly for not going through my optometrist's shop. (I know, silly, but they treat me right, they do! I wonder if they'd be willing to find me a tiny screw to fit the hinge of my sadly defunct, cheap, but beloved sunglasses.)
High-index plastic is actually not so great optically and cheaper than the superior Trivex.
I'll be taking yuppie questions all week.
I wear old wire-rim glasses, the kind with the filigreed frames and curved earpieces, and replacements are plentiful in antique shops and on eBay. I just scored some nice silver frames for five bucks.
I couldn't afford Trivex on the University's GSHIP. Damn budget crisis.
Cala! I also just bought a pair of eyeglasses at CostCo. Also contact lenses at a great price.
My Dad says his CostCo pair of glasses work better than any other pair he's had in years. He went there after giving up on his (former) optometrist's glasses shop.
I paid a fair amount of money on high tech low weight not too thick glasses a few years ago in the hopes of being able to use glasses as a daily alternative to contacts, but even though I seem to see well enough with them - peripheral vision isn't great, but at my prescription that's nearly inevitable - I'm so nearsighted that glasses just can't match contact lenses. So I wear mine from the sink where I take the contacts out to my bed and then back again in the morning. I could do that with a cheaper pair.
210: No, just batshit nearsighted.
I need to get new contact lenses, but my vision coverage only covers exams (where they try to push on your eyeball to test for glaucoma, fuck that shit.) for glasses, and since wearing my contacts while writing means I end up with sore eyes anyway, I've put that off.
you have no choice but to go to an "in-network" provider.
?? I don't think our VSP plan gives a rat's ass which provider we use.
I'm all about cheap frames. It's not at all hard to find cute ones if you just take the time and go to several shops and try on every fucking frame you can find. But I admit that, with my extreme near-sightedness *and* my astigmatism *and* my bifocals, I end up paying through the nose for high index progressive lenses.
That said, I'm old enough that my prescription doesn't change much, and I managed to get 2-for-1 last time I got new glasses, so I used my plan this time around for contact lenses. I think it cost me all of $20.
The glaucoma test is worth it. My brother's glaucoma was caught in time, but if he hadn't caught it the problems would have been very severe. He got panicky enough to spam his family.
if you just take the time and go to several shops and try on every fucking frame you can find
Wheeeeeeee
Progressive lenses are actually reactionary, sexist, looksist, and agist.
218: I'm sure it's a good thing, but I'd never had one before, and they didn't tell me why they were moving something towards my eyeball, at which point I freaked out, and since my blood pressure shot up, the test results would have been invalid anyway.
221 sounds like a typical immigrant-misunderstands-standard-practice tale. I have no idea what Cala's excuse is.
I hate the test myself. I believe that there's an easier test out. But be sure to have it done at some point.
221 happens to me everytime they try to do that test. DO NOT TOUCH MY EYES!
221: You get used to it! (Really.)
I was a little amazed at the advances in eye-testing last year, since the last time I'd been was something like 5 years previous. Along with the glaucoma pressure-shot were a variety of point-something-at-your-eye and look at it devices: they told me all about the shape of my eyeball, the pressure exerted by my vitreous fluid, and so on. Which does go toward the type of contacts best suited for your eye(ball) -- and apparently there are many, many kinds available. I wound up trying and rejecting, sometimes after several days, 2 or 3 different brands and apparently shapes of contact. It was worth it.
I've never had them actually touch my eye with an object, just an alarmingly focused puff of air. What are they poking you with?
I am at the 90+ percentile of people who don't like their eyes touched. I've never even thought of contact lenses for that reason. I also don't wear my false teeth.
Probably misogyny and homophobia -- I don't like things stuck in me.
227: I don't KNOW because I had my glasses off and couldn't see! Some sort of metal-looking instrument that was going to poke me. They did not do this at my last appointment, which was back in 2001.
227: The air puff is the pupil dilation. When I went recently they had upgraded to a chemical method of dilation.
I believe that there's an easier test out.
There is. I had it done just last week. It's the puff-of-air on your eyeball test, which still feels weird, but not nearly as bad as when they actually touch your eyeball and press into it.
Given that we're obviously not meant to touch the eyeball (except for medical-diagnostic purposes, of course), I'm surprised this body part isn't the subject of a fetish. Or maybe it is! For those who really want to transgress the limits of the ordinary.
Wait, am I totally confused? (it wouldn't be the first time, of course). I thought that puff of air thing was a new test for glaucoma?
232: Nope, I'm confused. It's a test for glaucoma.
If I'm not mistaken, Bataille wrote something about gouging out his dead mother's eyeball and having sex with her head. As I understand, he was trying for the Guinness book of records.
You had to ask, didn't you?
Ask Emerson about the consulting optometrist on Un Chien Andalou.
Once, when removing my contacts I realized that there was no contact on my right eye. I figured it was sticking so I tried a few times to to "pinch" it. I then realized it wasn't there at all and that the slick thing I had been touching… Ewwww.
I then realized it wasn't there at all and that the slick thing I had been touching... Ewwww....it was George Bataille's penis.
232: Yeah, for glaucoma, but they've been doing it to me for the last 15 years, so I don't think it's new. And either they've perfected it or I've gotten used to it, because it didn't make me jerk back violently with a watery eye as it once did. Just kinda blinked and went, "huh, that's weird. Carry on! What's next?"
To pile on the Emerson wagon-train, though, do have this test done. A friend of mine who was all of 27 or so at the time was diagnosed in time, thank god.
*Yeah, yeah, I know, consider the source, blah blah. But seriously! Cute frames! My mother thinks they make me look like a professor!
My mom thinks my Costco frames are cool, too! It's clearly the place to go if you want to impress your mom. (My mom got a pair there, too, but now she thinks they are too trendy for her and won't wear them...
I'm old enough that my prescription doesn't change much,
Oh ha ha, wait and see, b, wait and see. Or rather wait until you hold the menu at arm's length and still don't see!
mcmc, cut that shit out. I never find myself holding the menu away, then close up, then away again while my friend cocks a skeptical eyebrow at me.
But only when wearing my stupid, stupid glasses, which are stupid, did I mention?
I lose about a point size every 2 years in my ability to read type. Sometimes if I stare for a long time under bright light my eyes finally adapt, down to about 10pt. Oh well, if I get legally blind, maybe my long-term disability insurance will kick in, plus I can get inspirational articles written about me in Reader's Digest: mcmc, Blind Painter of Ninjas.
I read menus by eating them.
I need tongue glasses.
mcmc, Blind Painter of Ninjas.
The Zatoichi of the brush!
They've been doing the puff of air since I was a kid, so at least twenty years. What's this with actually touching the eye? Is this a door-to-door optometrist? Did he also offer you a breast exam?
Some places also don't dilate your pupils anymore. They have a new kind of camera that can check your retina without chemical dilation.
Honest to God, the puff of air test was absolutely new to me, and I had it done at the CostCo. But come to think of it, my previous optometrist did go door-to-door, and I believe he said something about the Watchtower?
The puff of air was new to me. All the way through college I never had it done, then in grad school they had the special camera thing, and then I lost that insurance.
I don't know what the puff of air is, but they've done it at every eye exam I've had. Roughly years 1988 to 2005.
It's possible that I just don't remember the puff of air from when I was younger. It's never bothered me.
Puff of air is for measuring intraocular pressure. To see if you've got glaucoma.
I have a small scar on my chin from a middleschool slow-dancing injury.
wait and see, b, wait and see. Or rather wait until you hold the menu at arm's length and still don't see!
I *already* have bifocals. Have had since I was 26.
You people who are afraid of the air puff are wusses. PK is mad because he's too young to have the air puff.
Although creeping blindness is a bitch, the major consolation of being diagnosed with glaucoma is that any decent doctor in one of the decadent coastal enclaves will give you a scrip for medical marijuana. It's one of the best therapies available.
I spent about €2,500 (after tax breaks) on eye laser surgery 5 years ago and it's probably the best money I ever spent. I wasn't very severely shortsighted but had a fair bit of astigmatism. They could have corrected much more severe problems if necessary because apparently I have lovely thick corneas.
My scars are boring - I used to have more but over time they have disappeared. Two scars under my chin, one from some childhood mishap and one from falling off my bike in college. A few acne scars, one of which (on my back) is quite large. Couple of chicken pox marks on the décolletage. Weird oval dent on one shin where I skidded on a wet bathroom floor and scraped off a lump of flesh sliding under a piece of wood, then failed to realise I ought to have it stitched. Patch on one hand which never freckles, from a chemical burn (car airbag).
Hit on leg with coal shovel (which broke in half. Grr): 3 inch scar
Gouged other leg on oil drum: 2 inch scar
Appendectomy scar
Fell down 70-foot slope: scars on knuckles
Stabbed in hand with (weirdly) bulldog clip: 1 inch scar
Plus various other dents, lumps and wiggles from fractures...
Relevant t-shirt: MOUNTAIN BIKING. BECAUSE FRACTURES HEAL AND CHICKS DIG SCARS.
I would like further explanation of 250.
I have a small scar on my chin from a middleschool slow-dancing injury.
I've a similar scar - on my heart. Darling Lenore, where are you now?
Regarding glaucoma, I was diagnosed at age 21. They did the air-puff repeatedly because they couldn't believe a guy that young could have such high pressure. They thought I was squinting.
Well yeah, after about 5 air-puffs I was squinting and flinching and curling up like a fishing worm thank you very much.
The real doctors numb it and press this blue-light thing on it and see how much it dimples.
So far after thirty years I got scrip for nothing except timoptic drops. Curse the midwest and Merck.
I once was pan-frying a steak and I splashed a bunch of hot butter across the back of my left hand, which took the skin off a patch about 1-1/2" x 3". While it was healing I put drugstore aloe lotion on it, the kind that has green dye in it, so the scar was dyed green for a couple or three months. Unfortunately it eventually faded.
I've also got a little scar on my left side from where my girlfriend stabbed at me with an 8" butcher knife 32 years ago, but I twisted out of the way and she only opened me up just a little bit. But it's cool, 'cause she was drunk!
The interesting thing is that Kiernan is 37 years old. Kids grow up fast on the mean streets of wherever he's from.
two-inch long keloid splash-shaped scar on my wrist -- age 12-ish i was making little lead soldiers by melting down a lump of lead i found on our roof* and pouring it into plaster moulds
the soldiers worked out ok(i mean they looked rubbish but i came to no harm); but then i got ambitious and as a present for my sister tried to make a little lead mouse -- modelled a disney character, ip-theft alert -- ... the cavity was in this case a bit bulbous (cz the mouse is fat) and the lead bubbled splash-backily
i flinched and the container** i was carefully pouring it from tipped a stream of it onto my wrist -- it fell off instantly (with the skin) and i put it under the cold tap for a while, got some bandaging, tidied up the cooker and kitchen floor up quietly (i was alone in the house) and told no one
(i must have told someone eventually -- my mum surely asked the moment she saw the bandage -- but i don't remember this bit, let alone being told off) (if i was)
the burn was not i think that dreadful, despite being motlen lead***, but your wrist is a BAD place to carry a nice healing scab safely: every time you move your hand the bending limb pulls at the inflexible scab matter; on one occasion i recall VERY clearly i put my hand down into a wellington boot to pull up a sock, and though my hand went down inside the boot, the scab stayed on the outside...
*the lump of lead wasn't actually attached to anything, though probably had been important to roof integrity at some earlier point in the century -- i got half a dozen soldiers and a mouse and a half out of it
**a lyons coffee-tin i had bored holes in and wired to a piece of wood so i could hold it without burning my fingers
***ie hurt no worse (that i recall) than for example boiling water or fat scalds i've had when cooking (when i tell this story people invariably repeat it as "boiling lead", but i doubt our cooker was up to this, luckily)
