The where, when, and how of how I got my scars are stories that only I can tell. They are the memories of the events that created them. I will always have them. Scars preserve my past, they’ve become little museums on my body.
The most interesting of these stories happened between 1988 and 1996, right around primary and secondary school, though over time I’ve forgotten the exact dates and chronology.
The First Scars
Before I get to those stories, I’ll tell you about my very first scars. I only know the situation that created them from my mother’s stories, as I was only 2 years old at the time. It was 1980, and we lived in a tiny apartment right next to Kraków’s Błonia meadows. The bathroom only had a toilet and a sink. There was no bathtub or shower, so you had to bathe in a large metal basin. During a period when my dad was painting the apartment, the cans of paint — opened in various drastic ways, leaving all the edges sharp and jagged — were stored behind the toilet. After one bath, before my mom could grab me, I slipped and fell face-first into those cans. To this day, I have a cluster of tiny scars around my mouth. I look at them every time I shave. Not many people can boast of something like that!
Childhood Scars
Getting back to the scars whose creation I actually remember: since I can’t put them in chronological order, I’ll start from the top. I have two scars on my head. One right on the top, and one on the back. The first one happened while playing in my grandmother’s garden. My brother, my cousins, and I were digging a huge hole with a hoe. I don’t remember the purpose anymore, but I remember my cousin swinging it with great force. At one point, I got the idea to peek into the hole, which coincided perfectly with the moment the hoe came down with a vengeance. It hit me perfectly on the crown of my head. I remember the blood on my hands and getting stitches and a bandage at the emergency room. It’s a miracle I survived!
By that time, we were living in the Piastów housing estate in Kraków. Over Okulickiego Street, there is a viaduct that separates Piastów from the Kaliny estate. It was a tradition that from time to time, two groups of kids from each estate would gather to fight over which estate the viaduct belonged to. The fights, of course, took place on it, and we used everything we could get our hands on — from planks and poles to stones and chains. It was a chain during one of these fights that wrapped around my head and left me with the second scar on the back of it. Afterward, I washed the blood out of my hair at a friend’s place, so my parents wouldn’t notice by accident. I had hair back then!
The same cousin who took care of my head also managed to jab a sharpened stick into my stomach. Another scar! When I think about it now, I wonder if he wasn’t secretly hunting me. Almost every weekend, our whole big family would spend time in the countryside. There were five of us kids in total, four boys and one girl, and without exception, we all ran into the woods with knives, little hatchets, and other tools you could use to cut a branch from a tree, sharpen it, and hurt someone. Don’t judge — that’s just how all the kids played in the villages back then!
We also had a big mutt, who looked almost like a German Shepherd. As he got older, he got sick, started having epileptic fits, and became distrustful and aggressive towards strangers. Every time I took him for a walk, I tried to keep my distance from other dogs and people. It didn’t always work, and situations would arise where our Max, along with other dogs, would start attacking and barking at each other. During one of these walks, I tried to pull my dog away from the others and stood in front of him. He wasn’t muzzled, and in a fit of aggression, he sank his teeth right into my left knee. Luckily, my friend was there, who informed my parents to come get the dog and me—lying there and bleeding. Because of Max’s illness, we eventually had to put him to sleep, but the imprint of his teeth will stay with me for the rest of my life!
The Teenage Scar
When I was a teenager, I also loved skiing. Every winter, my cousins and I would visit every possible ski slope. One time in Korbielów, we were racing to see who could get to the bottom of the slope first. I rode out onto a large clearing where there was only one high-voltage pylon. Of course, I slammed into it at full speed. I only had time to throw myself backwards with my legs forward, so the entire impact focused on my left shin. It’s a miracle I didn’t break it, but I skinned it so badly that a scar remained.
Every scar on my body is a unique story, a memory of the event that created it. I would never want to forget them, because each one reminds me of the moments that shaped me.