ASSIGNMENTS:
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Krystina Gaudio
Baltimore, Maryland USA
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REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
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There was a time in my life when I thought everybody was staring at my scar. Now you can barely notice it, unless you're me. This scar is part of who I am. I was only 3 years old when I received this wound. Perhaps it's because I've told the story so many times, or maybe because it was the first traumatic experience of my life, but I can remember so many details about that day.
I must have just discovered pockets, and they were my downfall that day. At the time, I had a bad habit of running with my hands in my pockets. This is around the same time that I realized that my mother had an uncanny ability to predict the future. "Krystina, you're going to fall", she would always say as she took my hands out of my pockets. Surely my mother couldn't be right.
It was a weekend afternoon, and my house was warm and filled with sunlight. My mother and father and a few visitors were sitting in the living room of our newly-built condo. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity to enjoy the traditional preschooler pastime of running around.
It was at this time that I had the grand idea to put my hands in my pockets and run around the front hallway and the kitchen, skidding on the new linoleum in my socks. I'm not sure how long I enjoyed this newly-invented game until I lost my footing on the kitchen tile and fell to the ground, banging my forehead on the corner on the wall separating the hallway from the kitchen.
I was stunned, but not hurt. This I remember. From this point on, the story becomes a little faded. My next memory was my father picking me up and sitting me on the kitchen counter and looking at my forehead. I'm pretty sure my mother was panicking. My father, a seasoned paramedic, calmly put me in the back on his SUV and the three of us drove to the hospital.
My next memory is the light. I would have dreams about this every now and again for the rest of my life. I was under this bright light, and I could feel the light even though my eyes were closed. It was uncomfortably bright, and I tried to turn my head away, only I was pinned down. I can remember being frustrated with this. I did not feel pain.
Next, I remember drinking orange juice in the back of my dad's truck on the way back to our condo. The ordeal was over. The scar was large and took up a big part of my forehead. The wound seemed to heal slowly, as there are numerous pictures and home videos in which I'm running around with a large bandage on my forehead.
The scar is faded now, but it comes out in the summer when I get a sunburn. There is also a slight indentation you can feel when you touch wound but you can not see it.
For as long as I live, I will have this scar, and it has become a part of who I am.
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