The Monocle

What I meant to say is that I am TOTALLY on board NaBloPoMo on the EVEN days of the month. So today's food for thought prompt from them is: Would you rather be wealthy and ugly, wise and sickly, or beautiful and stupid?

No, I didn't think so either.

Instead I will take one from October 22nd: Do you have any scars? How'd you get them?

Yes - I have scars, three of which have stories I like to tell. My favorite is from 2nd Grade.

In 2nd grade I had these 2 big hardcover science books that were prized possessions, constant companions. I can still visualize them quite clearly, but not clearly enough to get a good google search result. One book had a light blue cover (I can't recall the photo), the other was orange with a baby seal who kind of looked like this:

So I brought the books to school pretty much every day. During an arts & crafts project which may or may not have involved a pine cone and/or macaroni, a drop of glue fell on the orange book - smack dab on top of one of the baby seal's eyes. I did not realize it right away so when I discovered the drop it had already hardened into a perfectly round shallow dome - an opaque eye patch if you will.

It was rainy that day, so morning recess was inside - a perfect opportunity to restore the book. I held the book firmly in place on my desk with my left hand, palm down, fingers spread. In my right hand, a pair of open scissors. I proceeded to scrape the glue spot using a jabbing motion with one of the scissor blades. One of those jabs made less than perfect contact and the scissors soaredover the small milky dome in straight in to my hand - the point jammed in to that soft spot at the bottom of your thumb that you are supposed to squeeze when you get a headache.

It started to bleed pretty much immediately so I quickly formed a bowl with my right hand to catch the dripping blood and ran out to the hallway to find Mrs. Baker, the teacher on duty who in turn sent me to the nurse, etc. etc. Those details are not interesting at all.

When I returned to my desk, someone had cleaned everything up - wiped up the floor, the desk, the book - apart from my bandaged hand, you would have never known the incident had occurred. Of course the first thing I did was inspect the book. The eye patch was gone (?!), but replaced with a monocle - a perfect ring of dried blood surrounding that poor baby seal's eye. Sort of like this:

I don't REALLY know how or when the glue spot popped off, leaving just the thin ring of blood. I don't know what happened to those books - likely replaced by Beverly Cleary as it was right around this time I entered the Ramona phase. But I do know that it was an ill conceived method of removal and that little memento on my left hand will always to remind me.