Departing the indoor aquatics area at Timberhill Athletic Club the other night after soaking in the hot tub, I encountered a woman roughly my age who had just finished a bunch of laps in the pool.
She smiled and said hello, and I did the same, and then I noticed a not-terribly-old surgical scar running a few inches down the front of her left thigh from the bottom edge of her bathing suit.
Being a combination of nosy and extroverted — both are sort of occupational hazards for someone in the news business, I guess — I blurted out without hesitation, “Did you have a hip replacement?”
She smiled again and answered in the affirmative.
“I guess I forget that the scar is so visible,” she added, sounding just a bit embarrassed and/or self-conscious.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It looks good. To me scars like that are badges of prestige, indicators of a life actively lived. I’ve got a bunch of surgical scars too; I like them.”
I’ve written on this subject before, as some of you longtime readers may remember.
Since that post, I’ve had suspicious moles removed from my right hand and left biceps (five stitches total) and a ruptured left biceps tendon put back together (roughly 20 stitches). After the tendon surgery, the physical therapist told me I should be proud of that injury, because it’s an active-person’s injury.
I agreed.
And now, today’s Catch of the Day, No 28, a left-handed Nokona “Bulldog” catcher’s mitt that I bought about a decade ago for I think $15 at Play It Again Sports in Salem. “Why do you need that?” my son Bob asked at the time of purchase. I couldn’t really answer then, and I can’t really answer now either, other than to say it’s pretty cool:
