Useful Scars

The first time Adam rode a bicycle without training wheels, a scar, a nasty one, appeared on his left knee. He squeezed his eyes shut instead of the breaks. The bike careened out of control, and he ended up in a ditch after inertia dragged him a few feet to get there.

For a few seconds, he stared at the gash. He could almost see the bone of his kneecap. His Uncle Rich, teaching him to ride the bike, came to Adam before pain did.

Seeing the brief worried look on Uncle Rich’s face, the five-year-old Adam did the only thing he could do in that situation — bawl his eyes out.

“Let’s patch you up. Scarred but never scared, eh?” Uncle Rich said, collecting Adam in his arms after Adam’s tears were satisfied by their soliloquy.

Uncle Rich was treating Adam like a big boy now. Not someone to be coddled. But an equal — equality that comes from the realization that real pain, that dividing line between child and boy, has now been successfully crossed by a five-year-old.

It did the trick. Adam’s fascination with the gash started when he saw the scar being stitched up by someone whose scrubs had all of Adam’s favorite action heroes winking and high-fiving Adam for being such a good boy.

For the next few days, Adam could eat whatever he wanted. He could watch whatever he wanted on TV.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, the scar got infected. To tiny Adam, who couldn’t help but scratch his itching knee, much pus needed to be squeezed out and examined. In the same clinic, someone else who wore the same scrubs tried to distract Adam by asking him all sorts of questions about Ariel or Aladdin. But Adam was rather curious about the thick yellow liquid oozing out of his knee. He marveled at the pink and yellow bubbles that came out of the wound when hydrogen peroxide was sprayed on it.

After some squeezing, what looked like a cocoon of thicker yellow-brown pus formed around a particle of dirt exited the scar. The tiny action heroes inside Adam’s knee made that cocoon to protect him, he was told. Adam talked about the little action heroes inside him for a while.

The wound healed quickly afterward. It left behind a curious pattern, like a garden symphylan that transformed into a sowbug when Adam bent the knee or stretched the skin just so.

The scar came in handy at school. Adam had something to brag about, something that made him distinctive, popular. Scars can do that. Scars can be useful.

Adam’s scar scared away other things that could’ve prevented him from learning to ride a bike, be popular in school, get parents to pamper him for a few days.

Eventually, Adam taught himself to ride a bike. His parents were livid at Uncle Rich. They forbid Uncle Rich from teaching Adam anything ever again.

He missed out on so much he could’ve learned from Uncle Rich. That invisible scar, that untold regret Adam carried inside him, Adam eventually figured out how to put it to good use.