My “Harry Potter” Scar

When I was 3 years old, a drunk taxi driver ran a stop sign and hit the back of the baby blue Volkswagen bug in which I rode to preschool.

We were 4 toddlers strapped across the back seat that day—two to a seatbelt, in the 1972 carpool, as was then the way.

I must have had my mother tell me the story of that morning a million times. It became a bedtime ritual.

It was an action-packed thriller that I couldn’t hear enough times. I was the star, the main actor, the main casualty.

I suppose I was lucky to be alive.
But I just felt like a freak.

The other kids didn’t get hurt like I did.
A couple cuts and scrapes was all.

No one else got 26-stitch, jagged, red and purple gash down the middle of their forehead like me.

🔹 The boy strapped in next to me was not even touched, physically.

His only injury was that he became so horrified by how I looked with the blood streaming down my face, that he then refused to speak for a month.

My having unruly, red curls made the lightning-bolt shaped, purple slash on my forehead look even scarier, according to his mother, who actually had the audacity to call my mother and complain about that at the time.

🔹 The other child I recall from the car was my best friend. She’d been riding up front next to her mom who was driving.

They both just got cute little cuts in their hairline.Their cuts even matched, just like their long, brown, straight hair, and just like I wanted to be.

I wanted to look like anything other than me.

***

As I grew older, my scar branded me with a deep insecurity, and that became my dominant inner dialogue, my identity, throughout childhood.

All I wanted to do was blend in and look like all the other kids. But that was not to be.

With subsequent surgeries, my scar has shrunk and faded considerably, and today, it is only visible only if you’re up real close.

But the psychological damage was done.

The scar shaped my sense of identity and the way I viewed my own appearance for years, perhaps permanently.

Kids do say the darndest things.

***

I never really reconciled how I felt about my scar until after my daughters were old enough to hear about it, see it, and study it.

One day, it occurred to one of them that my scar DID match with someone else’s. 

“Mommy has a scar just like Harry Potter,” I heard her telling a friend one day.

My daughters say my scar gives me superpowers.

Kids do say the darndest things.

***

So, maybe my scar isn’t a flaw, but a badge of honor?

A reminder of the strength I found in the darkest of times in my early childhood?

Who knows.

But it’s the scar that tells my early story, and so, no, I would not change anything about it now.

💌 Amanda

P.S. The attached photo struck me recently, so I include it for reference:  All I see is the scar.

Do you?

What is your early, defining story?