Writer's Workshop: Scar

Here I am, encouraging you to have your kids write regularly—to do the weekly journal writings on my WordSmithery assignments—and I don't even write regularly. Well, I do write regularly, I suppose, but I don't s-t-r-e-t-c-h very often with writing prompts.

So I was attracted to the weekly Writer's Workshop at Mama's Losin' It. She has a selection of writing prompts each week and encourages bloggers to pick one, write, and share. So this week I'm picking, "Tell us about that scar…"

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I know, you've probably never noticed it, not because it's in a secret place but because it's mostly faded. But it has kept me scared of big dogs since I was four-years-old. No, I'm not scared of your family pet that greets me at the door, but I am scared of dogs running around loose. (And packs of wild dogs, should I ever happen to run into one of those here in the suburbia.)

His name was Pepper, and he was a German Shepherd. He was not part of a pack of wild dogs, nor was he running around loose. I, in fact, was in his territory. He belonged to our neighbors on Castle Street, and the vanBurens had him nicely chained by their back door. But the vanBuren's house was a favorite gathering spot for neighborhood kids and their younger siblings, who trailed along behind. (No doubt, they were probably supposed to be taking care of us.)

And so as our teenage brothers did who-knows-what, my brother Stephen and I antagonized Pepper. Stephen did it first. He got right in Pepper's face and hissed. And because I did everything my slightly older brother did, I also got right in Pepper's face and hissed.

Dumb girl.

Yeah, so Pepper bit my face. My brothers rushed me home, and my mom took me over to Dr. Duell's office, where the good doctor sewed me up while his nurses and my mother held me down. Too close to the eye for anesthesia. And then a week or so later, when the bite got infected and the stitches had to be taken out and put back in, they all held me down again. I, a quiet child, was kicking and screaming. Or at least I was in my head.

My brother had a matching scar from when we were in a family car accident a few of years before that. Our scars have both faded now, and I would never hiss in the face of a dog if Stephen did it first. But still, I care what he thinks, and I wish I didn't. Some things never fade.



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