I Remember My First Cup Of Coffee...

On Scars, Bikinis, And Pink, Plushie Elephants.

I was talking with my father over dinner just the other night. He was reminiscing with me about when I was about fourteen months old and I was pretty badly injured in our (then) kitchen. We lived in La Jolla, California and I was just finding my feet, literally, in that I was beginning my lumbering, drunken journey towards becoming bipedal. Apparently I was at my mother’s side in the kitchen and I was able to find my way to a freshly brewed batch of coffee. I reached up and yanked on the carafe or coffee mug (this part is unclear) causing the scolding liquid to spill completely onto my body. It missed my face by mere inches but landed on my left arm and my chest, burning me badly. I’ll fast-forward a bit to the mad dash to Scripps Hospital in San Diego where they admitted me to the ER but sent us home claiming the injury looked severe but was no worse than “a bad sunburn”. Relieved, my parents took me home and my father said he even took the train the next day back to his office he had up in Los Angeles at the time.

My understanding is that he was gone less than 24 hours when my mom called him to say that my arm and chest were blistering badly and that the wound looked really angry. I was running a high fever and she was worried that something wasn’t right. They brought me up north into Los Angeles to a reputable burn center and doctors there were shocked that anyone would have sent me home with what were obviously third degree burns that had now begun to get infected. Good lookin’ out, mid-1970’s hospitals!

I spent about two weeks in the burn ward and underwent multiple surgeries to graft skin from my left leg onto my damaged arm and chest and this is where my conversation with my father (the other night) became so interesting to me. I watched him recalling these events; moments in time that I have almost zero recollection of, being that I was so young and still poopin’ my lil’ pants, and it occurred to me that these events were deeply traumatic to him. Even at 88 years young, the pain of this moment in time was still palpable. My conversations with my mom over the years have been similar. We even both acknowledged how it likely left more of a scar on my parents than it did on me. Though my scars are visible, both on my arm, my chest and on my leg, it’s become evident that our psychological wounds outweigh our physical wounds. Sometimes by orders of magnitude.

My father has spent some time and effort over the years transferring his 8mm and 16mm film reels to dvd for my family. It was a labor of love for him and it has been pretty fascinating to peruse these moving moments in time. Besides filming almost all of Incubus’ first concerts and countless shows since, there were the beautifully mundane moments that families accrue. Christmases, birthday parties, Halloween parades, first steps, meals, temper tantrums, etc. It’s been fascinating and hilarious to revisit my family’s history through the lens of my father’s camera. But I digress: the 8mm, soundless footage of me, 14 months old, bull-legged and diapered, wandering the halls of the burn ward somewhere in Sherman Oaks, CA with my left leg blackened by grafting and my arm secured into some exotic sideways architecture after all the surgeries was the most lasting of the imagery. I can see that it is me there, smiling and hobbling through the hallways but the memory is a projected one. The stories my parents have told me and now the grainy footage has added pictures to my pre-history. Some of us remember events from before our second year, but I count myself kind of lucky that this happened before my brain started logging events the way it does today. Maybe this was something so painful that my early software deleted or buried it. I almost feel compelled to apologize for using computing analogies to describe human processes; this is another conversation for another day, I suppose. But I do have one blurry recollection that seeing these home movies brought back and it is perhaps my only actual memory of this event. A pinkish/purple stuffed elephant made it’s way into my good arm and onto a few of the 8mm movies. It is very apparent in my facial expressions that he was my pal through this ordeal as I was proud to show him to whoever walked by or interacted with me. My parents have both told me more recently that many of the patients in the burn ward where so badly burned that interactions with other people were difficult, but when we’re at that stage of life where we aren’t old enough to understand what is normal and what is “different”, we aren’t frightened by rooms of people who’ve sustained life altering burns or debilitating injuries. So as I am told, I was quite popular at this burn center, as I was more than happy to visit anyone and everyone when I was up and around. But back to my little plush elephant.

There was a patient in the ward who had been burned in the identical place as I had but he was a man in his mid 30s, if my memory of these stories holds. My mother has told me over the years that he seemed angry and sad after his injuries and resulting surgery and wouldn’t get out of bed for a while. Apparently I visited with him enough that he became endeared to me and he got out of his bed and bought the pink elephant for me from the gift shop. I don’t know who this person was and I obviously have no contact with him but wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to speak to him? Maybe even thank him for the gift that is quite literally one of my first memories and the only memory, fuzzy and out of focus as it is, from this life altering experience. I hope his scars have since faded to some degree and that his memory of that time and place have settled in a way that he is able to make some sense of them in the grand scheme of things.

I will say that my scars where relatively severe, and that I still bear the marks of that unfortunate accident. Though my body has grown and the scars stayed the same size, so much so that they probably aren’t the first thing that someone notices when I’m walking or dancing around without a shirt on.

This brings me to a final thought for the day which is something I had shared in some form or another over the years in regards to those scars and my self consciousness about them. I wasn’t particularly ashamed of the them through my childhood up until summer camp at around the age of 7 or 8 years old when a kid who I was doing some sprinkler jumping with stopped me and asked if I knew I had dried egg on my chest. I wiped at my chest before realizing he was commenting on how my body looked different than everyone else’s and it all rushed at me like a malfunctioning sprinkler head, blasting me with uninvited and uncomfortably wet observations. I had something about me that I couldn’t change and had no control over. The little bastard ran off chanting some new song about how “Brandon’s got fried egg on his chest! La la la la!” And I sort of just stood there in one of those first moments of social anxiety born of self consciousness that I am sure everyone experiences to some degree or another at some point in their lives. Though the ingredients and the reasons why vary from person to person and from place to place, that moment when we realize our differences can be terrifying. But only until we encounter the follow up moment later in our lives, and I have faith that each of us, even if you haven’t encountered it yet, will most certainly come into the realization that what made you so deeply uncomfortable and anxious concerning your different-ness is (from a more matured lens) what also makes you unique. Even if it’s some trivial difference like an arch on your nose, the curve of your spine, or in my case the way my body scarred as a result of being burned as an infant. Our scars (to use that term as a sort of catch all metaphor) are part of what make us who we are. They are bodily topographies that are descriptive of the landscapes we’ve traveled and what has been gleaned from those adventures. And should we survive these stumbling moments into dangerous terrains we emerge more resilient, more road tested and dare I say more interesting(?) as a result.

(photo by me)

I remained self conscious about my scars until I was 15 years old. I’d met a girl I really liked that summer and on our second or third time hanging out we went to the beach and upon arrival she quickly stripped down to her bikini and started running towards the water to jump in. She stopped and turned at one point when she realized I wasn’t directly there with her, my plan being to wait until she was well out to sea before taking my shirt off and joining her in the cool water. Here, another memory is burned into my body: she turned around and walked back towards me. I recall her in her bikini and the fact that she was three years older than me and had the body to prove it. I distinctly remember a “gulp” audibly coming from me as she pushed through the sand then very calmly and frankly said to me, “You’re feeling self conscious about your burn scars aren’t you?” In my mind I was still under the impression that they hadn’t been noticed yet. “Well, I think they’re sexy. Come swim with me.”

You’re god damned right I took my shirt off and went swimming with her. And I have barely had a shirt on since. I’m sorry?

-Brandon

December 28th, 2023