DAY 3 - EXPLAIN HOW YOU GOT ONE OF YOUR SCARS

I have two scars. One is from having my appendix taken out a few years ago and that was probably like most other appendix stories -- you hurt, you see the doctor, you have emergency surgery before it bursts, stay a night or two at the hospital and then get to go home and do nothing for a week. I did have another doctor later tell me that it's a very nice scar and that whoever did it did a good job -- kind of random.

My second scar is actually older, I got it when I was a kid. I don't really even remember what grade I was in .... 4th or 5th maybe?

I was at the lake with my family and some friends that came along and were leaving from somebody's place after a visit. I was driving the boat and as we left the prop on the motor got caught up in a rope anchoring the end of the dock in place. The wheel started spinning around. My dad had recently made some modifications to the boat and there was some changes done on the wheel that hadn't been smoothed down yet. As it spun around something came around and cut my right forearm.

I didn't even know anything happened. In the midst of all that was going on I moved somewhere out of the way for the dads to figure out how to get untangled. Someone else finally saw my arm and asked what happened. Between 2 - 3 inches had been cleanly sliced open - deeply, I could see how thick my skin really was.

In most situations this is where you head to the doctor to get all fixed up, but that doesn't always happen in Alaska. We'd pretty much just gotten to the lake and the effort it takes to pack back up and get back to town includes a boat ride on the river and a drive. On top of that, I hate needles, so I did not want to go get stitches. My mom is a nurse so we went back to the cabin and she used steri-strips to put me back together -- obviously cleaning it and all that.

We stayed at the lake for the rest of the time and I have a fun scar. It doesn't really bother me that it's there. It's really smooth and flat - if you ran your finger across it you wouldn't be able to tell it's there. Sometimes it's a conversation started when someone notices it. I like to make stuff up about what happened - "knife fight" - but end up telling the actual story too.