"Look at her Pinky"

In High School when my best friend Carrie and I would meet new people one of the first things she would say to them is "look at her pinky."

For those of you who do not know, I burned my hands/arms when I was 5.
The story goes a little like this:
It was some holiday, I'm going to go with Memorial Day, but it could have been Labor day. Anyways, the whole family was out at our house. My brother's and my cousin and my mom decided to go for a walk down the road. I couldn't ride a bike, so I was riding on the back of a bike (the little plastic chairs that attach to it) that my 13 year old cousin was riding. We went down a cul-de-sac to explore and my mother left with my younger brother to go back home.

My two older brother's who were 7 and 9 at the time decided it would be cool to make a fire by rubbing sticks together. "That's going to be awesome", I thought to myself. There were tons of sticks and twigs to do this, so all 4 of us went walking around gathering them.

I found THE PERFECT STICK!! It was sitting on a pile of Coals. Little did I know they were burning coals. I reached for it, and as I reached for it...I fell. Right into the burning coals...I SCREAMED bloody murder. My cousin ran to me and pulled me out, because I obviously didn't realize that I needed to do that. I looked at my hands and they were purple with no skin on them. Gross, I know, I can still picture it. Yucky.

My mother, who was a good distance away, heard my screams and began running to where we were. By that time, my cousin had already put me on the back of the bike to take me back to my house. My mother was running towards us, so she "drove" me the rest of the way home. We put my hands under running water, my skin started to just hang off, so I started to pull it all off...bad idea, and then wrapped them in towels and placed them in a bucket of ice. We got to the Wilson County Memorial Hospital, but my burns were so bad that they couldn't do anything for me and so we journeyed up to San Antonio to Santa Rosa's Children's Hospital.
Well it was bad. I ended up having to stay there for 12 days because of all the infections and what not. Because I peeled most of the skin off of my left hand there wasn't much left to grow. I remember it looking like meat loaf...brown and crusty. There was a time when they thought I would need skin graphs...my mother explained that they would have to take skin off of my "rear end" and put it on my hands. I almost cried. I definitely didn't want doctors to see my bottom.

Anyways...I made some friends with the other sick children. They were obviously sicker than I was, but they were fun to play with. And when my family came to visit me they all had to wear masks and scrubs. They couldn't breathe on my hands.

Anyways, back to high school. Because my whole left hand is basically scare tissue and not skin, I can't straighten my pinky. It's ALWAYS going to be crooked.
But I look at my hand and all I can see is scar after scar and scar. I can see ALL of them and I don't like it. Mostly I'm scared of having to take the picture that most people take on their wedding day. The one of just their hands showing off the rings. Yuck.

<--Well, here is what my hand looks like to the human eye. Yes it just looks like a regular hand. But do you see what I mean when I mark all the scars?
To me, they just jump out and they are pretty gross. Of course, being a girl, I can notice everything.










I bring this up because a couple weeks ago I was showing my scars to a lady that I meet with pretty regularly. We were comparing scars and she kept telling me that she could barely see any of my scars. "WHAT? They're huge and all over." She still couldn't see them.
I can see all them the all the way up to my elbow.

It's weird how some people see something one way and another person can see the complete opposite.

At times I have grown to love my scars because it makes me unique and give me character. But at times I just think they're hideous. OK, so hideous is a strong word, but I definitely do not like them at times. Whatever.
I've just learned to live with them because I know they're not going to change anytime soon.
(<-- What I see)


I guess my whole point to this is, just because you can see something wrong with yourself whether it be mental or physical, you may be the only one who sees it.