How I Got My Facial Scar.

Pure Evil - Made entirely of broken dreams and hate. 

When I was four we went celebrated my dad's birthday at a farm down the road and under the freeway from where we lived. We were going there to ride a decrepit old Shetland pony and feed the ducks and geese that were in the next stall over. When we got there my dad put my two-year-old brother on the pony's back and led him around the barnyard. Then my older sister had her turn. She was six so got to ride all by herself around the small enclosure. 

I was no two-year-old baby and felt like I should have the same rights as my older 'big-girl' sister. My dad compromised and let me sit on the pony by myself but made the pony stand still while I rode it like a kinda big boy. I held tight to the pony's mane and enjoyed the thrill of sitting on a real pony.  My siblings fed the ducks and geese in the next paddock knock-off brand cheese puffs and stale bread. The pony took a few slow steps forward and bent down to pick up a cheese puff. I held his mane which pulled be over his head and into a stick on an old rotten bush. The stick went in my mouth and shattered on my jawbone sending splinters through my face from the inside. It did not tickle. 

My dad scooped me up and my mom held me in the front seat of the car as they rushed me to the hospital. They removed the stick but they didn't realize that there we so many splinters and they sent me home to rest. The splinters became infected and it took ten months of antibiotics, pain killers, and exploratory surgeries to get them out. 

There were almost daily visits to an ear-nose and throat doctor. My ENT doctor was a sweet man who was as gentle as he could be and took a genuine interest in me. He called me 'Nate the Great', which I loved. I was so infected that for a while he wanted to check up on me several times a week to make sure I didn't get dangerously sick. He even saw me on Christmas morning and brought me a Play-Doh extruding machine. My family could not afford the huge medical expense so he worked for free many times and then forgave much of our debt to him. For years after I was better he would call and and see how I was doing. 

Human beings don't come much better than that not much better at all.