I was inspecting my face after a shower when I noticed a small scar on my right temple. It is virtually invisible now but it was an angry white zig-zag for many years. I received it one night in 1984 when my best friend Jerry and I took our dates to the old “Devils Church” for some hormonally fueled teenage fun. The supposed Devil’s Church was really just a rock wall off of the road where it was rumored that a rock church once existed. There, the otherwise devout Christians were overcome with a satanic spirt and began to do horrible things as they worshipped their new master. No one could cite evidence for any of this of course, but it made good reason for causing your girlfriend to cling to you as you made up elaborate atrocities.

On this particular night we were standing outside the car and I was in full storytelling mode. The girls were suitably anxious and clingy and even Jerry was acting a little worried as he idly played with a dead oak branch he had found on the ground. At nearly the height of my dramatic recitation there came a tremendous crashing from the dark woods just behind us. I figured out later it was a mule deer, but at the moment it was Satan himself thundering through the forest in search of fresh souls. Jerry reacted immediately by swinging the oak branch up in a comically defensive position and slicing open my temple with the ragged end of it.

I had to smile to myself as the memory played again in my mind. While wondering what ever happened to Jerry, I brought my right hand up to trace the faint scar he had left so long ago. It was then that I noticed the scar that runs from the first joint of my right thumb halfway across the web of skin to my index finger. I see it every day when I write or practice guitar and I never think about it. Tonight though I was in the mood for trips down memory lane. I got this particularly nasty scar in July of 1994. My girlfriend had gone to the beach with her parents and I was pressed into service to feed and water her dogs while she was gone. One day I was in a hurry to feed the dogs and get to work and I carelessly pushed on one of the glass panes of the back door instead of the door iteself. The pane shattered and for a few moments I did not even realize I had injured myself. That is until the steady tapping of the stream of blood from my hand hitting the linoleum informed me otherwise. I stopped the bleeding and even managed to obtain a fresh pane of glass and replace the broken one before work, but my hand hurt like hell for several days afterwards. My girlfriends father approved of my work upon his return from the beach. He complimented me by telling me that it was probably better work than the existing panes. It would be the first and last time he would compliment me I fear.

I have a scar on my left arm, on the inside right on my elbow joint. I got that one from loading tin siding into a flat bottom boat on some God-forsaken island somewhere off the coast of Cape Coral in 2001. I have a large chunk missing from the skin on the outside of my right knee from falling while running full speed on asphalt in 1987. I have what appears to be a dimple on the left side of my face, but in actuality it is where I fell on a pencil in 1978. Another inch or so higher and I would be missing an eye, not remembering the terrible taste of a mouthful of blood and a ripped open gum as the pencil penetrated through to my upper jaw.

I have a cool scar that looks like a zipper just above my left knee. That one came from a chainsaw kicking back while cutting a stump in 1988. I have a million scars it seems and all of them tell a story. Stories of where I have been and who I have known. They tell stories of work and play, love and loss, good times and bad times. None of them mean very much without someone to tell their stories to though. I guess that is the only part of turning forty two on June 12th that is a downer. I have to do it alone, while I love and miss someone so very far away from me.

I suppose that is the worst scar of all, the one on my heart that just won’t heal.