Scars (Damage)

I have got to be more careful.

I was out at dinner the other night and happened looked down at my hands, then my arms, at least what were visible below the sleeves.  I had fresh scabs and older scabs, new purple scars and fading pale ones, all over the place.

And bruises too.  Purple, blackish, blotchy ones and green and yellow ones with seemingly no rhyme or reason to where they were.  It's not like I'm getting into fist fights.

And then I saw it was the same deal with my legs, from what I could see trying to be nonchalant and discreet from the restaurant table. 

And then I casually glanced around at every one else's hands and arms.  Perfectly nice and not mangled.  Not a visible, noticeable blemish among them.  Hmmm.

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I don't notice often times when I've hurt myself.  I'll bump into something or scratch against something and then later the red or pink abrasion will catch my eye, or the trickling blood.  I won't even have registered the pain that came with whatever caused that. 

Or should have come.  I'm not sure it ever hurt.  But I'm fairly certain it did and I have trained myself to disregard it because I'm focused on whatever it is I'm doing; even if whatever it is I'm doing doesn't require steadfast attention. 

A lot of times, I don't notice clanking into things unless other people are around and say something.  The last time I lived with people, I hit a coffee table with my shin so hard that I moved it, and the only way I knew about it is that my roommate said "what the hell?" and I had to stop and say "oh" and put the table back in place.

When I'm around other people, it turns out that do that with chairs and tables and doorways fairly often.  When I'm not around other people, I think I have vague recollections of immediate pain and blurting cusswords in the moment I injure myself, but I tend to be thinking about other things.

When I have one of these moments where I notice the blood or scabs or scars, what I think about is: maybe my nerves are deadening as I age; just one more thing getting worn out? Or are my nerves absolutely fine and it's just that when I was young, pain was a novel experience so it seared into my consciousness, but now it's a drop in the bucket so why bother acknowledging it?

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Like I say, I'm not really certain if I felt the pain or not.  And that's weird, I'm pretty sure.  But I must have, because I have pain receptors.  There are other times I am a big, giant, flaming pansy when it comes to being in pain.  I sprain an ankle or somesuch and I'm not sure there are many folks who make as much of a production out of how much pain they're in.  Not proud of it; just saying. 

But with little stuff? Not sure it registers at all.  And I'm not sure why. But I need to be more careful about the little stuff. 

Because it adds up.
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There's one thing that's become really clear to me lately, but it's not a scar per se.  A couple years ago, I was dating a girl and oft-handedly said, "I've never dated a girl with freckles before."  She replied, "Oh?" And then she got a trifle defensive (because that's what she did), "Well, I mean, you have freckles."  To which I said, "Oh, no, that's sun damage, sweetheart."

As a teenager, I was a baseball player.  Hours and hours, seemingly all spring and summer, I was outside in the sun.  I didn't wear sunscreen, because I had a baseball cap on and I was a teenager, of course. 

And then I was a soldier.  I wore a patrol cap or helmet when I was out in Iraq.  I didn't have time for sunscreen. 

And then I was an adventurer and have hiked or canoed or sailed or played with helicopters in Afghanistan and always had hats or caps.  When I remembered to do it, I put on sunscreen.

I recently cut my hair short for the first time in five years, because I was going to be out sailing in abominable heat for days on end.  And I slathered on sunscreen and put on my boat hat with the wide bill.  I know to do that because I'm not getting any younger; I already have the freckly-looking sun damage around my eyes, you see.

And after the first day, I happened to look in a mirror when I wasn't wearing the hat, and I thought, "Damn! I got a sunburn on my face anyway!" Because I had a distinct tan/burn line across my forehead right at where I had been wearing my hat.  But then I realized, it wasn't a tan/burn line from wearing my hat that one time. 

It just had been very light when I hadn't been out in the sun, or I had bangs before that hadn't made it noticeable,  but now I have a line of sun damage that's visible across my forehead. When you've spent summers and years wearing hats and caps in deserts and fields, well, there you go. 

I now have a perpetual mask on. 

My forehead is fresh; my face is worn out. 

As you age, these things get revealed to you.

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What's the next thing that's going to show up? 

I saw the scabs and scars at the dinner table and wondered, "Oh, God.  Is this going to be a death by a thousand paper cuts?  Am I going to hit forty-five and be a curled-in-a-ball, gnarled husk?"

My dad doesn't have the scars like me, but he did beat himself the hell up, so to speak.  I mean, he's clearly where I got it from.  He was an army ranger and green beret (for a brief time) and he was religious about staying fit, to the point he was beating cadets on the obstacle course at the Citadel even into his fifties.

He had to replace his hips at sixty-four and he does not move well at all.  He even said a lot of it happened because all of his ligaments and tendons just froze up/hardened because he never bothered stretching when he was younger.  It happens.

I recall one story where perhaps he tried to give me a head's up as to what's going to happen. 

When he was in his late fifties, he was out on a hiking trip with former students and they asked him, "Colonel, don't lie; if you woke up one morning at twenty-five feeling how you do when you wake up at fifty-eight, you'd think you caught the flu, wouldn't you?"  He wanted to argue, but had to agree.

And he was an athlete. 

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I'm not an athlete, at least not any more. I'm just your average, ordinary, out of shape, middle aged guy.  But I have mangled myself way, way, way more than your average, ordinary, out of shape, middle aged guy. 

When all this adds up, it's going to be bad.  I'm going to look like Reverse Dorian Gray, where people will suspect that there's a painting in my attic that gets a little bit younger and little more perfect the older I get.

I need to be more careful.  But I know me and I know that's not going to happen.

What's going to happen is that I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing until I physically can't do it any more.  Because that's me.  It just is.

But I need to be more careful.