The Scar

Imagine being alive for 50 odd years and having no interesting experiences worth telling others. Your childhood, school and college days, work days and several experiences with friends; at least one of them would’ve been a story worth a tale. Whenever that experience happened, it could’ve been a bad one and a forgettable one, but thirty odd years later, those are the things you can have a laugh at. My life had been quite an eventful one, and I had several such experiences.

It’s been exactly 35 years since this incident took place, but it wasn’t something I had told my family members or friends at all. At first it was a bit embarrassing, but so many years later it has become a thing to be told. I wasn’t going to narrate the story in any scenario, until my son finally questioned a big thing about myself: ‘Dad, why do you have a scar on your forehead?’

That question hit me like a bullet, and brought back memories of the past. It had been 35 years since I had that scar, and there was no way it could go away or could be hidden. The thing was on my forehead for years, and it was only a matter of time until somebody asked me about it, and it was my son’s curiousness about things that finally bought the story up. It was almost impossible to be able to convince him without telling the truth. After all, he was my son. Had something similar happened to my dad when I was about 12-13 years old, I would’ve investigated the heck out of it.

It had been a week since I had been asked about the scar, and I successfully avoided answering it by giving multiple excuses. Office workload, tiredness, etcetera were my reasons. Despite a week’s time, I failed to come up with a valid story that wouldn’t expose the truth, and finally came the day where I had to sit down and narrate the incident in front of my entire family. Come on, it wasn’t going to be that difficult, until it was. I finally told them.

‘It was a bright evening; the sun was still shining and there were no signs of darkness at all. 35 summers ago, the-then fifteen-year-old me had a passion for biking but I wasn’t legally allowed to drive, but with nobody home, I decided to drive my dad’s bike for some time until he got back. No license, no adult supervision, no experience; I checked all qualities of a criminal doing illegal things. A weird thought at that age, but visiting a jail was a thing I always wanted to do, and there was a possibility of achieving it soon.’

‘Having watched my dad ride the bike already, I had a general idea of how it worked. I slowly got on the bike: gripped the handlers, clutch lever and brake lever. It felt awesome while doing it for the first time, and then slowly starting the engine. Felt like a professional biker when I started riding it, and there was progress step by step. Shifting gears, taking turns and stopping at intervals, my dream came true, until everything went upside down. I crashed.

As a beginner, I didn’t like it at first but the reason for crashing wasn’t my trash driving. A young puppy came and crossed over the road, and I saved it from getting injured. Felt heroic after saving an innocent life, and that’s when the scar on my forehead was born. It was a sign of my bravery and heroic feat, something to be proud of, but it was embarrassing in its own way. Sneaking out on a bike without your parents’ permission got me in trouble, but it was an experience worth a tale.

My son got up to probably give his feedback on what had happened, but suddenly a familiar voice burst out laughing: it was my mom. Turns out that she listened to every word I had said for the past 15 minutes at the door, but it was only after the story when she decided to come inside. Damn, I had this feeling that something had gone wrong.

About 20 minutes later, my mom finally stopped laughing and finally spoke stuff. ‘This isn’t what happened at all: we never had a bike, and even if we did, you never had a passion for biking. You were always introverted, so whatever you said doesn’t make sense at all’ said my mom.

‘That’s exactly how it happened, I crashed from the bike and eventually got the scar. I remember it clearly’ I defended.

‘Not at all. You were a Harry Potter fan during your teenage years, and you were so obsessed with the lightning scar, you used a fork to carve that scar on your forehead. I clearly remember that your forehead was hurting a lot, and I don’t blame you. It was clearly a stupid thing to do, but I am surprised you don’t remember it’ she giggled.

Harry potter? Fork? Carving the scar myself? What the heck was my mom talking about? I didn’t remember doing a single thing from the above, and it totally confused me. One of the stories was wrong, because I don’t remember doing those things at all. Yes, I was a Potterhead, but I wasn’t crazy to painfully carve a lightning scar on my forehead. I was a 50-year-old man, and I wasn’t going to lie about a small incident which wasn’t going to have an impact on my life. The three of them (mom, son and wife) kept giggling at my puzzled face, and looked at me like I was a fool. Who knew that this scar was going to cause a whole different level of confusion in our minds?

Which one of us was having a memory-loss? Or were we living in an alternate reality? There were too many questions in my mind, but were impossible to have an answer.