I have three scars on my head; two of them are on the left side, and one is on the right. Each of the scars have opened twice, except the one on the right; it has opened three times. The scar on the right side is the first one; I remember the first accident. It was summer. I was around nine years old, and it was a Saturday afternoon. That weekend my step brothers Nick and Brandon were at our house; Nick and I were outside playing on our trampoline. I got bored and started going inside, when in the corner of my eye, I noticed a shining object. When I looked at where the light had come from, it wasn’t there anymore. I started looking for it around the trampoline. It took me maybe five minutes to find the object.
It was a fake pirate coin; on the head side was a pirate head, and on the tail side was a treasure chest over-flowing with money. Nick was helping me look; when I found it, he wanted to see what it was. I was very possessive of my belongings back then and still am a bit now, so when Nick wanted to look at it, I said no. I went inside to show everyone the coin I had found. I had my hand outstretched and open showing everyone what it was and telling them how I found it. Thinking I wasn’t paying attention, Nick tried to take the coin out of my hand; he had almost gotten it, but I closed my hand and withdrew it quickly. Nick obviously wanted the coin a lot because he tried to grab the coin out of my closed hand. I ran away and went outside; Nick followed me. He chased me around our yard for a few minutes, unsuccessfully. I thought I had a good lead, so I tried go back inside the house; as I got inside that’s when he caught me. He tried to get the coin out of my hand again. I struggled and freed myself, and at the same time I threw the coin into the living room. Seeing me do this, Nick pushed me aside so he could retrieve the coin; my head hit the corner of the doorway from the living room to the kitchen.
Even though I hit my head, I felt fine, I didn’t feel like I was hurt or bleeding. I got up with my hand on my head where it had hit the corner. I took my hand off my head, only to see it covered in blood. Being nine, I had never been around blood that much. The most I’d ever seen was when my leg got ran over by a bike; the amount of blood I seen that day, from one person, is still the most I have ever seen at one time, and it was all coming from me.
The instant my mom saw the blood, she called an ambulance, and my dad got a towel to stop the bleeding. Around me my siblings were gathering to see what had happened. During this kind of event, you would expect the person who is injured to be panic-like, and that’s how I was. When I found out I was bleeding, I started to cry; not because I hit my head and it hurt; it actually didn’t hurt at all. I was crying because I thought I was going to die. Back then I didn’t know it took more than a hit to the head to die so I thought I was actually dying.
By the time the ambulance got to the house we had changed my towel twice. I thought the men who came with the ambulance were nice. They said my injury wasn’t as bad as it looked but I needed to go to the hospital. I didn’t get to ride in the ambulance that day, but the men gave each of my siblings and me our own stuffed animals. After the ambulance left I went to the hospital with my mom
I don’t know why, but I don’t like hospitals, not like I’m standing outside one, and it looks like a prison with hundreds of criminals staring back at me. I just don’t like the, I guess, “aura” of hospitals. When I met with the doctor he gave me an option of stitches or staples. To close the wound. At the time, I thought stitches were a scary concept so I chose to get staples. When he put the staples in I barely felt a thing. It felt like a prick of a needle.
I had to have the staples in for four weeks. During that time I wasn’t allowed to sleep on the staples or do anything that could remove the staples. I don’t know if it is connected, but I never talked in my sleep until this accident. After the four weeks I went back to the hospital to remove the staples. I realized when they started taking the staples out that getting staples was a bad idea. The scab that had formed from the wound fused with the staples so when the doctor took them out he reopened the wound. It wasn’t as bad as when it had originally happened but it was still bloody.
This was the first time an accident happened. In total, it has happened seven times. Most of them I didn’t go to the hospital for. I just waited for the bleeding to stop. I only got stitches or staples for two of the accidents staples for the first time it happened and stitches for the seventh.
The seventh accident happened in seventh grade. That year I had gone to four different schools. This happened at the third. It was mid-October. Lunch was just ending on my second day there. All of the students were heading inside to go to their next classes. my friends and I were in the back of the group going in through the front door. My friend Neil, who I knew from other schools, and I were messing around and I tripped. I hit my head on one of the brick columns that hold up a roof for the walk way. I got up thinking nothing bad happened. I started walking on normally.
We were almost inside when Neil saw I was bleeding. I put my hand on my head where it had hit the column. I looked at my hand, and sure enough, there was blood. By this time I was experienced and knew what to do when this happened, so I kept my hand on my head and asked Neil where the nurse’s office was. Since this was my second day at this school and had no idea where half the rooms were.
I remember as we were walking to the nurse, I was completely calm, and Neil was freaking out. He thought he had caused me to trip, and he didn’t want to be in trouble. I was trying to calm him down. This always happened, I, the injured one, would try to calm someone who was trying to help me but at the same time more scared then I was. When we got to the nurse, he asked what was wrong and how it happened. I told him I had tripped and hit my head and that I was bleeding. He called the office, and they called my dad. Neil was still freaking out as I was waiting for my dad to pick me up and bring me to the hospital.
When my dad picked me up we went to the hospital. I again had the choice between stitches or staples. Using my past experience, I chose stitches. I had to get seven stitches. Which is sort funny seeming how this was the seventh time an accident had happened. I think I’ve grown out of my accident-proneness because this would happen at least one time or more a year, and since the seventh accident, I haven’t had another one. This concludes the story of my scars.