"Oh my God!" Blond Girl would say. "What happened to your stomach?!"
From the intonation of horror, one might assume I had an alien bulging from my belly-button.
When the first girl asked, I facetiously said "Oh, shark bite" thinking she would understand the absurdity and laugh with me. But she didn't. She really thought I had been bitten by a shark.
So, using a combination of information gathered during the Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" and my impeccable lying technique, I wove a story too real not to believe and too lucrative to take seriously.
"I was boarding when it came up behind me and bit me," I whispered, trying to sound emotional. "It was a bull shark...which are the meanest." (Shark Week Fact)
"So, like, were you legs inside the shark's stomach?" Blond Girl's voice was breathy with empathy.
"Oh, yeah, it was terrifying. I just remember trying to punch it's nose or eyes." I lifted up my shirt and her eyes grew round. "You know how most people get attacked in three feet of water?" (Shark Week Fact)
"Yeah," she moved closer.
"Well, it's true. That water wasn't deep so my dad ran in and hit the shark. It let go. Bit my board in half though."
"You are soooo lucky to be alive."
"Yeah. I had cut my finger on some coral earlier and didn't think much of it, but the doctor said they can smell a single drop of blood in over 10,000 gallons of water." (Shark Week Fact...I think.)
The Blond by now was shaking and nodding her head in absolute agreement. I could have told her the shark had two legs and she would have believed me.
"Do you have scars on your back?" She asked. "It bit you leg first, right?"
"Yeah," I pulled down my shirt. "I've had to have over seventeen plastic surgeries, and they still haven't fixed the start on my stomach. The only thing that really saved my back was that my board got in the way. I could have been paralyzed."
I felt sure that she would question why I was swimming under my surfboard or how someone could survive being bitten in half by a freaking bull shark. But she didn't.
She later called her mother and recounted my horrific tale of nautical terror.
The real story of my scar involves no sharks, surf boards or devious coral. The thing stretches from (literally) one side of my stomach to the other, arching upward towards my ribcage like weird, white snake stretching in the sun. It looks like a frown, especially when I wear a sports bra to go running.
I'm probably the only person in the world who gets blackheads on her belly.
Let me backtrack.
I am probably the only person in the world who gets blackheads on her belly because the massive scar on her stomach has pulled her skin into a thin, papery canvas that is perfect for catching dirt.
But it's my ebenezer, the reason I still breath in and out each day. Looking down at my mottled non-runway-approved stomach is how I am reminded that I should have died when I was eleven.
The real story involves a 9 cm by 11 cm tumor that almost cut off the blood supply to my heart, a medical evacuation out of China, lots of throwing up blood, morphine, a gay nurse getting pissed off at my dad and more.
Truly a TLC worthy story.
Before surgery, my dad convinced me to write "Please Take Pictures" on a piece of paper and stick it on my stomach so the doctors would see it when they stripped me of all my clothing. That is my father; even when faced with the large possibility that he would lose his daughter in a matter of hours, the man knew that it was more important for her to laugh than feel sorry for herself.
When I told my family the shark story, no one laughed harder or louder than my father.
No comments:
Post a Comment