The Bloodbath
When I was in second grade, we had a very outdoorsy teacher who loved to take us on day trips into the forest (didn’t everyone?). One particular trip, we were all playing hide and seek. I was hiding near the top of a hill when I thought I heard someone come my way, so I scrambled down the hill, zigzagging between stones and trees. The hill was quite steep. At one point, I made a jump. Bad idea: below me, not part of my calculations at all, was a big stone, and I landed with considerable force with my right elbow smashing down on the stone. I bled, I cried and I fled. Someone took me to the doctor’s office, which was near both the school and the childcare my mom was working in at the time. I won’t forget the sight of the doctor sticking a needle that, at the time, seemed to be of absolutely epic proportions into the gaping wound that was my elbow, probably to ensure that I didn’t get infected from whatever germs like to live in forests.
I was stitched up and got to go home, and after a week, the stitches were removed. That, too, was a bad idea: the doctor hadn’t counted on the fact that the wound was right in the middle of a frequently used joint, so he probably should have let the stitches stay for a bit longer. That same night, I was taking a bath. In the tub with me I had some plastic toys, including a red plastic boat. I must have made a sudden move, because I bumped into the boat. It hurt a little, nothing serious, but unfortunately, it also opened the wound up again. I bled like crazy. It wasn’t very painful, but it was fascinating: I was sitting there in the tub, blood was pouring out of my elbow, and pretty quickly the entire tub was blood red.
I can imagine how the scene must have looked: me, lying in a tub filled with blood-colored water in a small bathroom with garish yellow-green wallpaper, bleeding profusely out of my elbow. It must, I imagine, have looked like a scene out of mob movie. (I wish.)
I still have a prominent scar on my right elbow. If I’d kept the stitches a little while longer, or if it hadn’t been for that plastic toy boat, it would have been a lot smaller. Occasionally, I get people who have known me for years asking me how come you have that scar on your elbow. Even some of my classmates who were there on the school trip in question have forgotten all about the incident, and of course never knew about the bloody bath, and so have asked me many years later about my elbow. It’s my one and only scar, and I wear it proudly. (Well, really, I don’t think about it much. Occasionally I meet someone who hasn’t heard about it and they ask, and I remember.)
Why am I telling you this story? Because I stumbled over this Unphotographable-esque contest, and I remembered the bloodbath, and I wished someone had photographed it.
