My Lucky Scars

Publisher’s note: Good morning! Welcome to Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog entry published in 2017. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. We hope you enjoy it.

When I was about 11, my parents took a trip to Cancun and left us with Hazel, a Nurse Ratched type with a beehive hairdo, a messed-up back and a matching disposition.

It was Halloween, and so we were carving pumpkins in the garage. I was using my Cub Scout knife – improperly. The knife slipped and slashed the web between the thumb and index finger on my left hand. The cut was all the way through the web and 1" into my palm.

The blood on the pumpkin was… impressive. I ran to find Hazel. She was a nurse and (I hoped) could sew me up. With my arm completely coated in blood, I asked her: “Am I going to die?”

Hazel shrugged and made a noise that sounded like: “M…