Scar

A normal 8-year-old child in a normal household might ask for help. Or a stepstool. Then again, how many children in how many households discover their favorite toys sitting on top of bookcases sitting on top of radiators? “Normal” was not the spirit of the day. Besides, all our stepstools were already being used as shelving units for other items. No, the most expeditious course would be to scale this sucker and use my extendo-reach superpower to grab the robots and pull them down.

The vintage 1974 scar smack dab in the middle of my right shin is v-shaped. No hair has ever grown there. V’s are among the simplest of the letters, giving the infinite “o”, which arguably requires more talent to successfully complete by hand, a run for its money. Two lines beginning apart and then angling downward towards each other, on a crash course to meet and terminate at the same point, creating a chevron. In my case, this neat and perfect symbol is a complete betrayal of the idiotic and ultimately gory accident that created it. And since both capital V’s and lowercase v’s are the same simple shape, it’s difficult to determine whether my shin v is upper or lowercase. I suppose, since it hurt so damn much when I got it, I’d prefer it be a capital V. But since it was completely of my own moronic volition and creation, I’ll accept the lower case. 

That Saturday, I suddenly and desperately needed to play with my Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. We were stuck amid a never-ending early Iowa spring, a season of nonstop overcast skies occasionally punctuated by 40 mile an hour rain. It was a fertile breeding ground for childhood boredom. 

I’d originally received that wonderfully simple boxing robots toy as a Christmas gift the year before, playing with it nonstop, in the middle of the living room floor, for several weeks. Two 8-inch-tall plastic robots – one red, one blue – atop a one foot square plastic boxing ring, stood opposite one another in punching position, fists clenched. Using a thumb from each hand to operate the controls of each robot, I’d press the buttons with malevolent glee to make each robot throw punches toward the other’s chin. Land a punch in just the right spot and the opponent’s head would instantly pop up an inch or so, with the aid of a spring-loaded steel post affixed to the bottom of the head. Magical. Of course, once I figured out the exact placement of a punch that would knock a robot’s “block off,” I did it over and over for an hour or so. After that, I was pretty much done with the toy, having gained enough self-worth to rest on my laurels until the next mind-bending challenge came along. 

Now, a year or so later, having apparently exhausted all other entertainment options, I was prepared, no, demanding, to regain my title as world heavyweight thumb twiddler. But in that house of ours, beloved toys were known to disappear, usually submerged somewhere among the crowded noise of bottomless bric-a-brac. At times like this I would often consult with our Chief Miscellany Officer, my mom, usually by shouting to her from 3 or 4 rooms away. “Mom, have you seen my (item here)?”, is how the conversation would generally commence. 

“Yes, Shaney, it’s here. Somewhere. Do you need it now?”, is how a simple question would inevitably launch an hours-long search. As with everyone else living under our roof, Mom was constantly on her own desperate hunt for some random quarry, usually a newspaper from the recent past or a back issue of People. In a familiar scene, this time I found her rummaging through a tall stack of newspapers in our cramped but cozy den. 

“Yeah, Mom. I want to play with it.”

“Did you look in your closet? Russ!” she shouted to Dad somewhere on the other side of the house, “Where did you put last week’s Penny Saver?”

“I threw it away!” he shouted back. Nearly 25 years into their marriage, Dad still hadn’t learned that if you insisted on throwing away garbage, it was best Mom not know about it.

“I was saving that!”, is a phrase Mom cried out 6 or 7 times a day, steeped in performative outrage. “They had a coupon for rubber gloves!”

“We have a whole basket of rubber gloves on the back stairs.” (Large home that it was, ours had a back stairway leading from the second-floor hallway down to the kitchen. A fascinating and unique feature that had become hopelessly clogged with kitchen miscellany that somehow wouldn’t fit in our massive kitchen.)

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Robots?”

“Did you look in your closet?”

“It’s not in there.”

A lengthy, loud and exasperated sigh filled the room, code for, “Do we really need to get into this now, can’t you see I’m busy looking for expired coupons?” 

“I don’t know, Shane, I saw it someplace.”

“Is it…do you think it’s in the attic? Should I go up to the…”

“Don’t go in the attic.” I was expecting this response, but I loved triggering Mom with the prospect of me barging into her third-floor treasure chest and trampling all over the neatly organized warehouse of family memorabilia. Our attic was indeed warehouse sized, but one would consider it “organized” only in the sense that the most valuable items were consistently the hardest to find. It was a 2000 square foot minefield of disappointment, a sea of broken furniture stacked high with boxes large and small, labeled in magic marker with cryptic messages like “Christmas 1970,” “Purple Collection,” or, misleadingly, “Important.” Still, I enjoyed the occasional visit to the top floor, always with the dim hope of unearthing some long-forgotten plaything. 

“Go look in your old room,” Mom suggested distractingly, “I might’ve seen it there.” My old room was the second-floor sunroom – a space my brother Derek and I had shared for several years until Dana and Craig’s larger bedroom, in the opposite corner of the hall, became available to us. The sunroom had since become a sort of mini-attic – a way station for gently-used, still-useful items not yet ready for a full burial in the attic. It was full of sewing-related materials, boxes of old magazines, and bookcases jammed with encyclopedia volumes, Time-Life collections, children’s books and all manner of not-very-good fiction and non-fiction. 

Mom was right. There was a good chance — not great — that my Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots had taken up residence somewhere in that room – out of the way, but not yet retired. I quickly tore out of the backroom, sprinted through the living room, rounded the corner into the front hall and bounded up the stairs three at a time. Throwing open the sunroom door with the anticipatory delight of an archeologist on the verge of an historic find, I quickly scanned the bright space, hoping to spot a glint of the toy’s familiar colors – the dull red of Robot 1, the aqua blue of Robot 2, or the pale yellow of the square plastic boxing ring. 

I started low and left, eyes darting back and forth across bookcases, boxes and baskets. I slowly turned to take in the rest of the room directly in front of me. I caught a glimpse of our old orange corduroy daybed, now a comfortable retirement spot for small appliance boxes, now filled with everything but appliances. So that’s what happened to it. I looked to the bookcase next to me on the right, resting precariously atop a low, wide radiator. This was our home: things on top of things that shouldn’t have things on top of them. My eyes tracked the bookcase upward toward its terminus until, my god, I spotted a glorious wedge of yellow plastic jutting out from its top ledge. There it was. My Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, a mere eight feet above floor level. 

I remember grabbing a vertical edge of the bookcase, stepping on top of the right edge of the radiator and pulling myself up. Once I reached elevation, balancing on the outer edge of the radiator, I reached my hand up as high as I could in the direction of the robots. 

I would love to see the next instant captured on video, in slow motion. The fingertips of my right hand grazing the bottom corner of the robots toy just enough to unmoor it from atop the bookcase. Its full two pounds of sharp and jutting molded plastic airborne southward toward my dumb, horrified face like an anvil in a Road Runner cartoon. My skinny body tipping backward and joining the toy in midair for a fraction of a second before we both hit the floor in a two-note thud. 

All the great scars are somewhat expository – a visual feast not so much divulging the how and why as demanding that they exist, leaving you wanting to know more, sparking your imagination, “Looks like he was maybe sliding down a telephone pole and caught a massive splinter straight through his pectoral region. My god, I bet that was a hell of a mess.” I wouldn’t consider the dainty “v” on my right shin a great scar. Unique, I suppose. Still, it represents of snapshot of a single moment – a collision of circumstances. Also, it was a hell of a mess. 

If you’re familiar with a traditional hot water radiator, you may be able to picture the round valve knob on the end, usually about 3 inches in diameter, which you can turn clockwise or counter to adjust the heat. The valve knob is round and smooth. But it straddles a jutting square valve (steel, of course) which is apparently ideal for poking, stabbing and tearing flesh. As it turns out, on my way floorward from earlier heights, my shin had made illustrious contact with this radiator valve. First my jeans were torn, then my leg. 

It was not apparent at first how my injury occurred. Later on, after the excruciating pain and the blood and the attendant screaming and crying, after the trip to the emergency room, Dad and I reconstructed the events of the moment. “Yeah. I should probably get a knob for that. Or maybe duct tape.”