Earlier this week, I blogged about visual storytelling, including a bullet point about unusual media used to tell stories — Lego-like blocks and Viewmaster-like reels.

After I posted that entry, I came across a piece on NewYorkTimes.com entitled “Our Scars Tell the Stories of Our Lives” by Dana Jennings, who wrote:

Our scars tell stories. Sometimes they’re stark tales of life-threatening catastrophes, but more often they’re just footnotes to the ordinary but bloody detours that befall us on the roadways of life.

I realized that was true. My most storied scar is on the index finger of my left hand. It’s not very visible, but I can feel it.

I garnered this scar by placing my hand on a glass pane on our back door of the home of my teenage years (I was about 16) and slamming the door too hard — in anger because my mother refused to take me to see an R-rated movie. The movie, I recall, was Diary of a Mad Housewife, which I still have not seen to this day.

The pane broke, and my left hand went through it, slicing up my left thumb and index finger. The scar on my thumb is interesting, too, because the doctors grafted a piece of skin from my hip onto the wound. Thus I have occasionally told people I was touching my hip when my hands were nowhere near my hip.

But the one on my index finger had a more lasting legacy because from the time my finger healed, I have always used the scar to discern my left hand from my right hand. Yes, I’m one of those people who has trouble with left and right. Whenever my brain has to make a decision involving left or right, I engage in a split-second cheat — using my left thumb to feel for the scar on my index finger.

My husband has a legendary scar on his chin attained when, as a boy, he and his brother were racing home on bikes, and Randall hit a new, unexpected patch of gravel. His bike skidded, and Randall flipped over his bike, landing on his chin. Ouch.

People in my generation also often have large vaccination scars from smallpox vaccinations, as well as scars from chicken pox. Younger generations probably don’t have those.

Jennings concludes: “I relish the stories [scars] tell. Then again, I’ve always believed in the power of stories, and I certainly believe in the power of scars.”

What are your scar stories?