My Scar
Jake Jacobs
When I was 12 years old I lived in Jamestown Apartments, a complex of about 18 buildings across the street from the George Washington Motor Lodge, and right next to the Willow Grove interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We used to practice playing soccer in the middle of the complex at the top of the double hill by the entrance to the pool area next to the maintenance shed.
Often the ball would go over the pool area fence that just about came up to our chins and was made of painted-white aluminum, mimicking, I suppose, an old-fashioned picket fence. You had to boost yourself up, then, being careful not to get your pants caught on the tops of the metal pickets, stand on top and hop off, get the ball, throw it back over, then climb the fence again. We discovered an old wooden ladder next to the shed that we could prop up so that one end was in the pool area and the other end leaned on the top of the fence; that way once you got the ball, you could run up the ladder incline and hop off. This saved some time. One day after school, I was playing there with two friends. Without our knowledge, someone had replaced our leaning wooden ladder with one of those aluminum jobs, with the swivel feet sticking out on our side of the fence. Only the swivel thing on one side was broken off, so what was sticking out was just the piece of metal that held the foot.
I had the ball, there was one defender, and the other guy was the goalie. Moving up field, I faked to the right, but went left and got past the defender, then started cruising along the fence side towards the goalie. The next thing I know I was looking up at the sky. I had apparently been knocked flat on my back. I guessed I had slipped.
Being a conscientious player, I got up quickly with the ball still at my feet, took a couple of steps, then shot the ball to the goal. Well, it flew past the goalie because he was just standing there staring at me in horror and then he yelled, "You're fucking bleeding!" I looked down and all I could think was "My New Chucks!", thinking that somehow my sneakers had some weird dirt all over them. Then I realized that my pants also had this dark dirt, then "My new dungaree jacket!" I followed the "dirt" up with my hand to my head and out of the corner of my eye I watched my hand get completely covered in blood! ThatŐs when I realized my head was bleeding a lot, and that it hurt like hell! I screamed and yelled. Some guy heard my screams and jumped off the slightly raised balcony of his apartment, yelled to another friend on her balcony to get a rag or something. He stuck it to my head, picked me up, put me in his car, and drove me to the hospital. There I had to wait about two hours before they could do anything more than keep the wound clean, as my parents were stuck in traffic on the way home from work and didn't yet know I was in the hospital. Finally, they started working on me by sticking anesthesia needles in my head, then a slow process of installing the 42 stitches it would take to keep the cut closed. The doctor said I was lucky; an inch to the right and my eye would've been gone, and a bit to the left and I could have cut through my temple and maybe died! Well, it took a good hour or so to stitch me up, and during the process a little boy was brought in that had fallen in a creek and had to get a couple of stitches in his hand. He was crying and screaming a lot, and to calm him down, the nurse pointed to me and said "Come on now, don't cry. Look at that boy over there; he split his head open and he's not crying!" Well, just about then the doctor happened to hit a spot with his needle where the anesthesia had worn off. I quickly imagined me screaming, then the boy freaking out and go tearing out of the hospital with his hand still bleeding. So I just grabbed my nurse's hand and pressed it into the bed rail really hard until she said enthusiastically, "Doctor! Doctor! I think something's wrong!". When I got back to school after about 3 days off, kids said that they had heard that my eye had popped out; others heard that I had died.
illustrations by Jake