howlingfan Mail #2
So begins Round 2. If this had been Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, I hope you’d have remembered to tap the “Select” key repeatedly, so as to regain some energy.
The forehead scar — yeah, that one, right over your right eyebrow. How’d that come to pass? — H.D., New Rochelle, NY
This is more often asked by people who have actually seen me or a picture of me or maybe even a detailed caricature of me roller-skating.
I’m like a Magic 8-ball with this question. It’s not a “yes” or “no,” but just the same there’s a good chance you won’t get the same answer as the person standing next to you.
Past responses have included:
1) It happened when I was about ten years old. Inspired by a daredevil, I took to jumping over things on my skateboard. I went too fast over my parents’ car and landed myself first on the asphalt and then in the hospital.
2) I turned back an “Aveda Kedavra” while still a baby. You should see the other guy.
3) It was November 5…two days after my birthday…I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock. The porcelain was wet, I slipped and hit my head and when I came to, I had a revelation, a vision, a picture in my head. And a gash on it.
4) I was at a bar up by Fordham, talking to a friend of mine, by the door. A girl walks in with a cowboy hat on. Drunk, I shout more loudly than I want to: “That girl’s got a cowboy hat on!” I don’t think much of it – I only make a point to tell my equally drunk friend because I find that in the Northeast especially, a cowboy hat makes a person infinitely more interesting. I want to know this person, if only to ask, “Why do you have a cowboy hat on?”
Anyway, many hours and drinks later, Cowgirl’s boyfriend sidles up to me at the bar and asks me why I have a problem with his girl. I didn’t think Cowgirl had heard me, but apparently shouting is fairly audible. So I tell her boyfriend it wasn’t a problem that I had at all, but rather I was giving a compliment by way of a curiosity. He buys it at first. But when he turns away and I make fun of him, he wants to be a big man about that, too, so we step outside. It’s quick: As we pass through the door he spins quickly, right into my reflex-driven fist. He falls to the ground, but not before he gets a broken bottle in my face.
5) Years ago, I went with my roommate and his girlfriend to a nearby hardware superstore – a nice little Saturday. I was poking fun at just how huge this store was, comically huge, when a piece of metal jumped up from the cart where it was sitting and hit me in the face. If I weren’t talking to my roommate’s girlfriend, with my head down and turned, I’d have gotten it in the eye. Luckily, my brow got the brunt of it. Now, the scar’s a reminder to maintain focus straight ahead of me and to let peripheral things be just those, and to slouch whenever possible. It also reminds me of that time I got into that barfight.
Pick yer poison.
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