It never fails.  When you’re in a group of people and someone mentions a bandage on someone else’s person, there ensues a discussion about every injury these people have ever had.  I like to call these discussions Scar Wars.

The conversation eventually gets around to each person.  Each person then relates a horror story that relates to a scar on their body.  Each story gets worse and worse as if they were trying to outdo each other in their extremeness.

For example Joe might notice a bandage on Jim and ask, “What happened?”

Most of the time it’s something pretty benign like, “Oh, I cut myself shaving.”  No one is so indiscreet as to ask why the cut was on his elbow.

Joe just nods and says, “I do that a lot, but usually it’s on my neck, where it bleeds like crazy.”  It had to be just a little gorier.

Linda chimes in, “I cut my knee once while I was shaving and I had to have  twelve stitches.”

Larry says, “I had to have stitches in my knee once when I was a kid, because I fell on garden rake.  Want to see the scar?” 

Scar Wars is now well under way and escalating at an alarming rate.

Cathy says, “Wow, that’s a nasty scar!  I fell on a piece of glass and should’ve had stitches but we were too far from a hospital.  So now I have this huge scar.”

Jack is grossed out, but shows his manly side by relating his story.  “We were hiking on a mountain side when I stepped into a bear trap.  I had to be air-lifted out.”  He rolls down his sock and shows everyone a scar that looks like an ankle bracelet.

Jennifer is impressed.  “You know people would pay good money for a tattoo that looks like that.  I have one on my big toe like that from a run-in with a lawn mower.”

Since she doesn’t take off her shoes to show everyone, the assemblage is not entirely convinced.  This opens up the floor to stories that are stretching the limits of the truth.

Paul tells everyone how he was on a mountainside once when an earthquake occurred.  The ground opened up and he slid into a hole on his back.  He found a crack in the side of the mountain and climbed out.   The scars were supposedly on his back and he didn’t want to take off his shirt, but he swears it happened. 

Reallly?  Maybe he was simply embarrassed about his hairy back or the fact that he had a black-head the size of Wyoming back there co-habitating with his earthquake scars.
          
Pam, not to be outdone, says she was once considered by NASA to be in the astronaut training program but she had part of a lung removed when she was a kid and they saw the scar during her physical.  Now she is a filing clerk in an insurance office. 

Hmm. 

Terrell wants to really impress everyone.  He has a scar on his finger that is about a quarter inch long.  So he tells everyone the story of how he used to be an international spy and was caught and tortured by his enemies.  They threatened to cut off his fingers one by one if he didn’t spill his secrets.  He never caved.  Just as they were cutting the first finger (where the scar is), he rose up with the chair he was tied to and impaled his torturer with the chair leg and escaped.

Everyone stared at him for a full minute, mouths agape, then mumbled some excuse about getting another drink, and the group dissipated.

The moral of the story here is that you should never tell people you were an international spy in a game of Scar Wars.  No one can top that story, so they will not believe yours.

Laura Snyder

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her new book.