My Favorite Scar

I’ve got lots of scars. That’s the fun of having pale skin and not healing very well and doing stupid things.

Of all of my many scars, though, I think the one I got from a ceramic hummingbird is  my favorite. First of all, it’s right across the bridge of my nose. Second of all, when I say I got it from a ceramic hummingbird, people automatically want to know the story because, dude, how do you get a scar on your nose from a ceramic hummingbird? There is no mundane way something like that happens.

So, here’s the story.

When I worked in the jewelry department at the local Wal-Mart, we had a gift wall that featured ceramic figurines, jewelry boxes, snow globes, and the like. Mother’s Day and Christmas were two of the holidays that those gifts were supposed to focus on. The trouble was that nobody wanted to be a ceramic mother figure for their mother and as a result, the gift wall looked like someone with a hoarding problem trying to be neat instead of a display.

Overstock was supposed to go on the riser above the wall. On the day in question, I was on the ladder rearranging the riser shelf to make room for yet more boxes of these ceramic nightmares, trying to figure out how to stack all of this stuff without breaking safety codes.

As I was moving some of the boxes of ceramic humming birds, I noticed too late that one side of the shelf had come out of its slot. Before I could fix it, that side of the shelf fell, sending a row of ceramic humming birds right at my face. I was unprepared for the aviary onslaught and one of the boxes hit me in the face, the corner of it busting open the bridge of my nose. I don’t know if you’ve handled much in the way of ceramics, but they can be quite weighty. Those humming birds were a lot heavier than their living counterparts. I got rocked pretty good.

Bleeding, seeing a couple of stars, I climbed down off of the ladder, applied a Kleenex and some pressure to the wound…and then helped a customer because apparently he really needed to see a pair of earrings and my need for a Band-Aid could wait.

Once I did get the Band-Aid applied, I then had the fortune of telling every one of my co-workers why I had a Band-Aid on my nose. They all thought it was hilarious. Except for one. When she pointed out how easily I could have been killed (if the bird had hit me a little bit harder, it would have knocked me out and I would have been in bad shape going unconscious at the top of a ladder), it wasn’t quite as funny anymore.

Now, though, with the scar so faded most people don’t notice it, the humor has returned.

With a story like that, though, my favorite scar still manages to get some attention.