People With Gnarly Scars Open Up About How They Got Them

Scars always come with stories. Sometimes it's just surgery, sometimes you had a bad fall--sometimes, it's something else altogether. They're always fun to hear about and never fun to sustain.

Redditor Shinscar asked:

Your scar...What's its origin story?

Here are some Redditors' scar stories.

Heart surgery. Then heart surgery again.

Bio dad threw a brick at my mom's car. Glass went everywhere, I have a dent on the back of my skull (brick) and a scar on my forehead (glass).

I made a sword. My best friend made a sword. You can see where this is going

Bit by a "friendly" adult ball python while working at an exotic pet store.

To be honest, it isn't much of a scar now, but its the only cool animal scar I have left. (Now that the OBT and dog bites have healed)

Harry Potter and I have something in common: We both have a scar on our forehead.

Except mine came from an evil countertop.

In school I was once cutting some extremely dense cardboard with an X-acto knife, which slipped and stabbed me right in the hand. Everyone freaked out at the blood gushing from my hand, but I just casually strolled to the bathroom, where I started swearing and kicking the walls as I tried to stop the bleeding.

The teacher said the cut would heal fine with no scarring, but it's still here years later.

On my chest, breathing tube.

On my hand, attempted to brace for impact with a car window.

On my head, walked into a street sign.

I have a scar on my left ankle from when my brother was doubling me on his bike. I was kicking my legs in excitement and my foot got caught between the front wheel and the forks. The spokes cut my ankle up pretty good.

I was not a smart kid.

I attempted to ride a Rottweiler like a horse.

My right temple has a nice one. I was at a co-workers party years ago and a friend of hers brought their 130 lb. Malamute. The dog was really cool all afternoon and was playing off leash in the backyard with little kids. We were all in awe of the size of the dog's head and I tried to take a cellphone picture(no flash, sound off) of it with my hand next to it for scale.

Well, the dog lost it. Now I'm 6'1" and was probably in the 250s back then. That was nothing to the dog. It stood straight up and chomped me right around my right temple area. He had a large portion of my large head in it's jaws and wouldn't let go. I had to get down on the ground and crawl towards the dog until some people could rush over and pull it off. I was scared it was going to rip part of my face off and it wouldn't let go, so all I could do is not pull away.

I ended up with 13 stitches in a semicircle in the affected area and for almost a decade you could see the jawline in the scars when I kept my hair short. You can really only see where the incisors went in these days but if I cut my hair super short, the curve is still there. It messed me up on dogs for years and that reminder of what happened every time I look in the mirror was tough to get past.

I did though and got my best friend Elsa 3.5 years ago! I'll always have the scar as a reminder but she's helped me move on. I hardly think about it anymore thanks to the sweetest Texas blonde ever.

Was chopping vegetables for a stew. Looked away and in doing so my finger orientation changed. I chopped down and instead of chopping veg, it was my the top of the middle joint of my left middle finger.

The knife kinda wedged into it at an angle so bandaging it was tough since the would would open every time I changed the bandage. So I decided what any frustrated not-quite-medical school-student/insane fool would do. I got some over the counter Lidocaine cream, numbed the area a bit, and went to work with a pair of scissors cutting off the flap of skin. The site healed fine but there's a scar now from where I removed the skin.

Then there's the scar on my right thigh...

Non malignant cyst on one boob. Refrigerator door in some shop gave way and fell on my foot.

My brother threw my cat at me.

Alcoholic father tried to use a hack saw to remove my thumbs because I was playing video games when he got home. Playing FO3 right now so it obviously didn't work.

Got hit by a car when I was around 6 years old. Doctors weren't sure how I lived - spent that entire year off school. It's pretty close to invisible now, but it's essentially the harry potter forehead scar. I have 4 big dents on my right leg from where they put big metal pins in as well, but the forehead one is better.

But I think I was mostly mentally scarred, because I was wearing this dope barney the dinosaur track suit and the medics had to cut it off with a knife when they got to the scene. I never recovered from that.

Fell off my ex's roof trying to not get caught by her parents. It was cold out and my fingers were numb.

Thought it would be rad to jump from a tree to a brick wall Spider-Man style. Young me forgot to get bit by a radioactive spider first.

Middle finger on the right hand - noticeably raised and slightly lighter bump on the finger pad. Was scooping up a living frog out of a broken bottle and got cut so badly that a small piece of my finger pad was almost completely cut off.

• Right middle finger - Tin can, lid sliced into my finger right to the bone. The cut is in the shape of an V but upside down.
• Right hip - dog responsible, knocked me over some brick stairs as it jumped onto me to get a good humping in... Dog was female... Wtf?
• Left ear - surgery to repair eardrum, surgeon had to pretty much cut my ear off flip it over and access my eardrum that way. The pain after sucked... The left side of my head still feels a bit f----ed up a year and a few months after. Look up myringoplasty if you're curious but be warned it's gnarly.
• Right side chest - air pellet, teenage idiocy believed a leather jacket would work as body armour.
• Left temple - Girl whacked me with a stick for no reason.
• Right foot ankle - got my foot caught between two rocks in a canyon.

A beer glass thrown to my face by a drunk guy while at a small social gathering. Hit my jaw bone, stitches.

Since it was my face I was following the doctors order to the letter, covering it with surgical tape when tanning and such, now 2 years later it's noticeable but it's not bad.

Would've been great if I'd been a guy so I could've grown a beard over it though.