Writer's Block: Don't fear the reaper
Jul. 30th, 2010 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafish[Error: unknown template qotd]
The closest I've come was when I was a baby. I was about nine months old and still learning to walk. My parents lived in an old house in downtown Huntington Beach; old enough that in the kitchen, all the electrical outlets were on the front of the counters instead of above them. My mother was frying something in an electric skillet and I toddled into to kitchen, grabbed the electrical cord and pulled the whole thing, hot oil and all down on top of myself. I was very badly burned.
I don't know how long I was in the hospital; they treated burns a lot differently back then. My mother said they just laid you out on a bed with no dressings (this was in 1963). I'm told it was pretty serious and they didn't know whether I'd survive. I don't remember - that was long before my memories begin.
I have scars on the top of my head, my neck and my shoulder and other small ones all over. My icon there is from when I was in 1st grade and that was how I always wore my hair until I got out of high school - parted on the side with a barette - because I needed to cover the bald spot. People always asked how I got the scar on my neck - and boys in middle school like to say "look, she's Frankenstein's daughter - you can see where they sewed her head on!" That wasn't the only reason for teasing, it was just a small part of their ammunition. I used to come home in tears fairly often and my mom would tell me, "Oh they just like you."
No, they didn't. When someone shoves you that hard into the lockers, it's not because they have a crush on you. I had several freshly sharpened pencils in my hand at the time, and I still have a tiny grey tattoo on my stomach from where they stabbed me because of that shove. It was malicious, and by a couple of boys and not a few girls as well, continued all through middle school. Slowed down in high school, but it still happened.
One of them wound up being in one of my biology classes in junior college. He pretended he didn't know me, and I was just as happy to leave it that way.
Sorry, sort of got off track from the question, didn't I.
The closest I've come was when I was a baby. I was about nine months old and still learning to walk. My parents lived in an old house in downtown Huntington Beach; old enough that in the kitchen, all the electrical outlets were on the front of the counters instead of above them. My mother was frying something in an electric skillet and I toddled into to kitchen, grabbed the electrical cord and pulled the whole thing, hot oil and all down on top of myself. I was very badly burned.
I don't know how long I was in the hospital; they treated burns a lot differently back then. My mother said they just laid you out on a bed with no dressings (this was in 1963). I'm told it was pretty serious and they didn't know whether I'd survive. I don't remember - that was long before my memories begin.
I have scars on the top of my head, my neck and my shoulder and other small ones all over. My icon there is from when I was in 1st grade and that was how I always wore my hair until I got out of high school - parted on the side with a barette - because I needed to cover the bald spot. People always asked how I got the scar on my neck - and boys in middle school like to say "look, she's Frankenstein's daughter - you can see where they sewed her head on!" That wasn't the only reason for teasing, it was just a small part of their ammunition. I used to come home in tears fairly often and my mom would tell me, "Oh they just like you."
No, they didn't. When someone shoves you that hard into the lockers, it's not because they have a crush on you. I had several freshly sharpened pencils in my hand at the time, and I still have a tiny grey tattoo on my stomach from where they stabbed me because of that shove. It was malicious, and by a couple of boys and not a few girls as well, continued all through middle school. Slowed down in high school, but it still happened.
One of them wound up being in one of my biology classes in junior college. He pretended he didn't know me, and I was just as happy to leave it that way.
Sorry, sort of got off track from the question, didn't I.
