I have a memory that’s older than my oldest memory, but I don’t know if it’s real or if I made it up.
When I was three, I put my arm through the backdoor window, you told me. I was running around the house, acting like Superman, my arms straight out in front of me as I soared through the air, battling evil. And, you said, I whipped right around a corner and put my arm straight through the backdoor window.
And my arm got cut right on the wrist, right on one of those veins you can see if you flex your muscles. And there was a tiny little fountain coming out, spurt, spurt, spurt, and you freaked. You were trying so hard to stop the bleeding.
And then your friend who was over at the time noticed a bloodstain at the top of my arm. And you took my shirt off, and up there, near my shoulder, was a gash over three inches long. Which, for a three-year-old, is a pretty big gash.
And you and me and your friend jumped in your friend’s car and she drove the three of us to the hospital, you on the verge of complete panic.
What I never told you was that I’ve always had this tickling of a memory in the back of my brain, as long as I can remember, of riding around in Herbie the Love Bug, from the old Disney films. I am in the back seat and Herbie is going up on its two left wheels, and then its two right wheels, over and over, each time it takes a turn. I had always thought it was a dream I had once had as a child.
So one day a couple of years ago I asked you if you happened to remember the kind of car your friend drove us to the hosptial with.
“Hmm,” you said, “I think it was a Volkwagen. Yes, it was a Volkswagen Bug.”
I still have the scars, one on my wrist and one near the shoulder. The upper scar is still the same length, still slightly over three inches long. You see, scar tissue never grows. Scar tissue always stays the same length that it was at the time of the accident.
