On New Year’s day, in the evening I was preparing some brownie à la mode for Melinda and me to enjoy. Melinda had made the brownies the night before and the remaining brownies were still in their pan. They had firmed up in the refrigerator and I was having some difficulty dislodging the last few pieces from where they had stuck to the sides of the glass pan. Despite a brief thought that what I was about to do might be a bad idea, I gripped the side with my left hand and tried to apply more force to the fork with my right hand.
Naturally, I slipped and jammed the fork into the palm of my left hand impaling one of its tips into the flesh. It hurt quite a bit, but fortunately the wound wasn’t very deep. No blood shot out, but it did start oozing a fair bit and required a bandaid. Today, it is a little sore if I accidentally push against it. Fortunately, it’s on my left hand which doesn’t see as much use as my right hand. Looking at it now, I wonder if it will leave a visible scar – perhaps a faint mark underneath the skin. If so, then it will be a mate for a similar wound scar on my right hand.
One day when I was in elementary school, I accidentally knocked my pencil off my desk and in my rush to reclaim it before it could fall, I actually managed to impale the pencil’s tip into my right hand as the pencil had rotated such that the tip was aimed skyward and the eraser was just making contact with the floor as my open palm accelerated towards the fallen object. I think that one bled a little more. It also left a little graphite in my hand so that to this day you can see the faint greenish spot underneath the skin.
In my mind’s eye as a child, this greenish mark on my hand transformed into the friendly gaze of a sperm whale whose mighty jaw was formed by my pinky and ring finger while it’s head was formed by the rest of my hand with my thumb flattened against the palm.
As there was no graphite on the offending fork and as I suspect that brownie would be readily broken down and absorbed by my body, I rather doubt to see years from now a twin green eye on my left palm. But perhaps there will be a scarred tiny patch where the fork entered. Or perhaps not. The skin above the green spot on my right palm doesn’t appear different from any other are of my hand.
What factors determine whether or not a particular injury to the skin will cleanly heal leaving no visible trace? Obviously, a large wound leaves a visible scar, but are there factors besides wound size involved? As fascinating a question no doubt as any ever raised, but that’s what you get when you ramble on in an attempt to write 500 words on the thinnest of materials in anticipation of not having much time later to produce anything better.