Swords and scars
Aged about eight, I and my then-best-friend Peter decided to play swords with some big bits of metal we found in the local scrapheap otherwise known as the back of his parents garage.

Having (then, as now) the reaction times and physical coordination of a blind orang-utang on barbiturates, this resulted in me getting twatted on the face. Blood all over, rivers of it.

This made me happy - everyone at school had a nosebleed, and now I had one too. Result! So proudly off to Peters mother...who called my mother...who to my bemusement turned up in the car (despite it being only 100m from our house)...because of course I hadn't got a nosebleed, I had sliced open my upper lip and it was flapping in the breeze.

A number of stiches at the time, and, despite 30+ (..eep...) years having passed, I still have a very handsome scar. Particularly visible if suntanned or unshaven. I like to think it makes me dangerously attractive.

Which is only one of a number of scars accumulated over the years, due to said lack of co-ordination and reaction - which really ought to have taught me to try more appropriate hobbies, but never has.

Second place of honour in my personal blood-everywhere competition was when I sliced open my knee during a fall when on a climbing trip in the Alps. In those balmy pre-mobile phone times (remember those?) getting help would have required a wait of fuck-knows-how-many hours whilst someone took themselves off the mountain....so I allowed my mate, who fancied himself as a paramedic, to stitch it up on the spot with the suture kit he just happened to have with him. Funnily enough, of all the times I have been stitched up, this hurt the least - as in not at all.
(FailedScientist, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 21:11, Reply)