[mreid]

I have four of note:

1. Really a series of six. When I was three, my beagle got in a fight with another dog. My mom watched in horror as I rode my tricycle into them I guess trying to break it up. I have six 1/2" long scars from the bites on my hands and arms to prove my bravery.

2. When I was six, I was walking barefoot with some friends and stepped on the curved side of a broken coke bottle. It didn't cut the bottom of my foot, but snapped around and sliced the inside of my ankle just below the ankle bone. That was 16 stitches.

3. When I was 16 I was at my girlfriend's house and she finally agreed to spend the night together at her parents cabin in the woods. I was so excited that I jumped up and ran into the other room of the basement, cracking my head on an overhead beam (it was six feet above the floor and I was 6' 4"). That was 20 stitches and a week in the hospital when it became infected. We never did complete that relationship and she was hot,

4. At 36, I was building a 1954 studebaker street rod. While at the local u-pull-it looking for a steering column, pedal set, brake master cylinder, and radiator, I found an 87 trans am that had all the right parts in the right sizes. I reached into the engine compartment and disturbed a wasp nest hidden behind the fan shroud. One stung me and when I yanked my right hand back, I drug the back of it across the sharp edge of the broken shroud. It gouged a strip of skin and flesh out of the back of my hand 2" long by 1/8". It was just hanging there like a bloody worm. I smeared it with grease, tore a strip off my tee shirt to tie around my hand, and finished getting my parts. My doctor later told me I really needed stitches, but I never got them and today the scar looks cool!