Some people buy t-shirts or bumper stickers of memorable events; I’d rather take home a nice scar, one with character.  A scar last forever.  Even if it’s hard to see, you still know it’s there.  You always remember.

A scar is like a fireman’s turnout coat covered in soot and char, but much more permanent.  It is a badge of honor.

Up to my thighs in foam and muck fighting a storm drain fire.

A scar happens where you are ‘there’, doing ‘it’.  It comes unpredictably and is never easily won.

Some people, not satisfied with the scars nature provides, decide to take matters into their own hands by getting tattoos.  After all, tattoos are nothing more than designer scars.

I remember a sign my grandpa had that attempted to bestow wisdom on younger generations:
As you go through life, two rules will never bend–Never whittle towards yourself or pee against the wind.
A scar stretches across my first knuckle that shows I finally learned that the whittling advice is sound.  (I won’t say how I learned the truth about the other rule, I’m just glad it doesn’t involve any scars.)

I was awarded my earliest scar (belly button excluded) in 4th grade.  I bought some Mexican Jumping Bean firecrackers before school.  Forgetting that squeezing ignites them, I jammed them into my pocket.  As I ran to class, one of them detonated and sparked a chain reaction that left me doing a fiery Latin dance as a cloud of smoke formed over my head.  My audience burst into applause.  There were no teachers around.  Besides, I couldn’t tell anyone without incriminating myself.  I spent the entire school day with the charred remains of my Levi’s pocket rubbing against a third degree burn.  That was my favorite scar for many years.

My biggest scar is also my most sentimental.  It is the result of a surgery to remove a malignant melanoma.  I was a student without health insurance so the Catholic Community Services clinic arranged for the surgery.  Judging by the jagged scar across the back of my neck, either the surgeon performed the surgery blindfolded, or it was his first procedure.  Even though I tell kids the scar is from a shark bite, it serves to remind me that the kindness of strangers saved my life.

I still can’t think about that scar without remembering my cousin, Brandi.  After battling cancer for five years, she died less than a year after I had my surgery.  But invisible scars are a different matter altogether.

Brandi Jordan

I’ve got scars from wrestling, and some from being the younger brother.  I have one that runs along my jaw that conjures images of swashbuckling and swordplay.   A couple of my scars were given to me by the U.S. Surgeon General.

Richard Carmona, Surgeon General

I earned my most recent scar at the Clarks’ Redneck Waterslide this summer.  Long after my record-setting feat has been forgotten, I’ll still have an Africa shaped trophy on my right shoulder.

I didn't wear a shirt for 3 days after this one.

Mine is a simple philosophy.  Chuck Palahniuk sums it up best in the book Fight Club:  ”I just don’t want to die without a few scars.”

Oh yeah, the best thing about scars–they only come after healing.  So take a few minutes, find all your best scars, and relish in the event, the struggle, the victory.  And if it’s not a good enough story, I’d go with a shark attack.

Through I series of preventable happenings (mostly my error of bringing the entire family to the livestock auction and leaving with a llama and a pony instead of a couple steers) we ended up with eleven grazers in our pasture this summer.  It didn’t take them long to do their job, and the time came for me to list our weedeaters on our local free classified site.

The filly went quick, so did a couple of the goats.  Just when I thought it would be easy to get rid of them the weirdness started.  I got a call regarding the llama.  Yeah, not so weird, but the second question out of his mouth was, “Can we slaughter it there?”

“Sure, there are slaughter houses in Cache…” oh wait.  You mean Here.  As in our backyard. I did a mental inventory of which friends knew about the ad and who would be demented enough to suggest slaughtering a llama at my house.  Coming up empty I had to play along.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I can’t really see why not.”  Except for the fact that you want to kill a pack animal in my yard.

“OK.  Do you have a shotgun?”

“Uh yes, but you can’t use my shotgun to kill my wife’s pet.”  I gotta draw the line somewhere, man.

“OK, I’ll bring my pistol.”

So now I just wait for the call telling me it was a hoax. The fact that you are reading this tells you it was not a hoax.

Next problem, How am I going to tell my wife? Easy, just tell her the truth: A pack of rabid javalinas devoured it.

Great plan!  Except…there are no javelinas roaming northern Utah.  Could’ve worked in Tucson.  Hmmm…Terrorists?  Frat boys?  A cult of albino midgets demanding a llama sacrifice?  It just might work.  But being the sensible and honest man that I am (not to mention being married to a human lie detector) I decided to be upfront.

My wife wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she wasn’t dead set against it either.  Now I’ve been married for 11 years so I picked up on the subtle hints she gave me like “If you let them eat my llama you can plan on taking up permanent residence on the couch.”  A newlywed might have completely missed her dismay.  But in over a decade of experience I have learned to pick up on those little clues women think are so obvious.  However, I am a Man and thus I am required to provide shelter, food, and cable TV for my mate and offspring.  The truth is you never know when the day will come when I have to venture out and bring home a wild llama to keep my family from starving.  So I decided to proceed, strictly for the experience.

The family arrived the following day and confirmed the hoaxlessness of the situation.  I was relieved when the father sent the 8 year old inside to play with my kids.  See, Wifey, I thought to myself in my I’m Always Right tone of voice, they’re not completely uncivilized.

Ten minutes later in the pasture he brandished his pistol and took aim assuring me, “I was in military.  I get her.”

He shot 5 times and somehow managed to miss every time from a distance of about 10 feet.  When he gave up with the gun and began to remove the rest of the bullets from the clip I did not feel reassured when he said, “Don’t worry.  I was in military.  I very safe with guns.”

I talked him into handing me the weapon while he kept an eye on the llama.  He stood watching the animal, waiting for it to drop.  I’m still not sure if he was actually convinced he had got a lucky shot in, or he was too embarrassed to admit to being the worst shot in the state of Utah.

“She going to drop any minute now,” he said after 10 minutes passed.  20 minutes.  30.  We could have watched til our children’s children got old and she would still be standing.  So we reverted to plan B:  “Get ‘er!”

This is a good time to tell you that when I bought this land I was told it was 2 acres.  Today I realized I got a smokin’ deal because we chased the animal over no less than two thousand sq. miles of my pasture.  However, the extra 1.2 million acres I had just discovered were small consolation as I mis-timed a heroic dive, and instead of ending up with handfuls of llama fur got a faceful of llama turd.

At one point I managed to corner the ferocious beast.  As it ran past me I latched on and took a ride that would have made a world class bull rider proud.  Bystanders timed it at 0.7 seconds, but I think there may have been a clock error involved.  My 4 year old mutton bustin’ son would have been proud.

At this point I realized our adventure was turning into an epic tale.  Oooh, I can be the hero on a white horse.  I’ll go get my gun.

At this point I need to explain that earlier in the morning I had visited the orthodontist, who had installed about eight pounds of new hardware and a wonderful device called a bite block in my mouth.

As I sat on the ground and took careful aim the curious animal stared directly at me.  And would not look away.  I waited and waited.  Then waited some more.  Frustrated I finally said, “Will you pleeth sthop stharing at me?”

“Stharing?” she asked.

“Yeth, I can’t thhoot with you stharing at me.”

The dumb beast just grinned.

The knew llamas were quick, but I was unaware they could dodge bullets, as it effortlessly did every time I shot.  By now we had taken about 200 shots between the two of us.  I reflected on how glad I was to live in a town so small no one calls the Sheriff because of shooting unless you break more than two of their windows.

My hunting partner’s wife eased our embarrassment by acknowledging the varied reason for our failure:  The neighbors were watching that one so you were nervous, that tiny head is just too small, it’s just not her time to die, I think the wind blew that one off course, and so on.

The excuses weren’t making us feel any better.  “Please sthop making excutheth for uth,” I asked.

“OK, you two just really suck.”

I think I liked the excutheth, I mean excuses, better.

I’ll not bore the reader with the countless hardships and struggles we had to overcome as we hunted the evasive beast.  Suffice it to say we eventually succeeded with the old you-chase-it-down-the-path-while-the-two-of-us-trip-it-with-this-rope trick.  I think I saw it on Robin Hood.  We were smart enough to realize it was the llama’s neck we had to ensnare, not the legs.  Once we snared the neck, I wrapped both ends of the rope around my hands and started yelling, “Gideeup, Mama Llama!”  I felt like Perseus in Clash of the Titans when he catches the Pegasus.

My fearless companion rushed up and grabbed at the front legs as the creature bucked.  We took it to the ground and I held it while my excited friend carefully llama-tied it.  (Llama-tied being a culturally sensitive substitution for hog-tied, in honor of my Muslim hunting partner.)

As I held her down she started talking to me again.  “By my count I’m kickin’ your assth on the sthcore card.”

I thought she was making fun of both my hunting prowess and lisp at the same time until I realized one of us had grazed her lip with one of our errant shots.  (I’m sure it was me.)

She continued, “Let me paint a picture: Three people with two gunsth, about 800 bulletsth and a butcher knife.  Dude.  I’m a llama.  Not a mountain lion, or an irate bull, or even a sthpirited colt.  I’m about as fearsthome as a dehorned pigmy goat.”

I always knew llamas were good-natured, I just didn’t know they were as easy going as the buddy you invite over to watch a regular season game in the basement.  In fact, through the entire ordeal the llama didn’t even spit, which is more than I can say for some of my friends.

By the time we had my new friend tied securely we had also realized, quite by accident, that she was male, not female.  As my partner stood to admire his handiwork, the llama looked straight at me and kicked its legs, breaking the thin rope that held it.  For two months my wife and I had struggled to come up with a proper girl’s name for our llama.  I admit it was a little heartbreaking to finally realize, two minutes before we were going to kill it, that his name was Samson.

The reader may be thinking that after missing at least two hundred times at relatively close range, getting dragged, and basically getting embarrassed by Samson the Llama we should probably give up.  But, as I have previously mentioned, I am a Man and trivialities such as these are often lost on me.

We did eventually restrain her.  I’m still amazed that my partner avoided any major arteries, mine or his, as he wildly sawed at the throat.  After its throat was cut, Samson used his last gulping throat breaths to tell me, “You get the knockout…but I still got you…on the score card.”

For months my wife and I had tried to befriend the llama.  I regret it took a four hour epic battle to succeed.  Sadly, as it turns out, it was Samson’s day to die.