“Want to see a cool trick?” my fourteen year old brother, Jeff asked, swinging a plastic coated metal broomstick in the air. “I can be just like a Ninja. Just watch.”

“Okay!”, I exclaimed, sitting down on the hardwood floor across from him expecting some kind of spectacular show to take place.

He started spinning the broom in the air between his fingers. Then he switched the broom from his left hand to his right hand and started twirling it behind his back. I giggled and clapped in amazement at my big brother’s tricks. Impressed by my amusement, Jeff smiled and started spinning the broom a little faster and began walking around the room and parading around me in a circle. Before I knew it, the tip of the broom hit me in the face and I fell back onto the floor and began crying. My brother looked at me strangely as I wept on the floor and then looked at the broom to see that the plastic cap on top of the broom was missing and that it was nothing but a razor sharp edge on top. He dropped the broom and quickly came to my side.

“I am so sorry! Are you okay? You won’t tell Mom will you?” he asked, frantically, as I continued to sob.

I shook my head and raised my eyes. My brother gasped and looked at me with widened eyes. I looked at the ground in shock to see a little puddle of blood slowly seeping into the cracks in the floor. I felt a stinging pain by my eye that continued to throb and ache. I lifted my hand and touched the source of the pain to feel warm blood trickling along side the right portion of my face from my eyebrow. I had never seen so much blood before. Warm tears came to my eyes again as blood continued to flow down my cheek.

“Please don’t cry! I am sorry”, he said, as he tried to cover my mouth before I cried. “I’ll let you play Sonic on my Sega Genesis all you want.” he offered. I shook my head and pushed him away.

At that moment I heard the jingle of my mom’s house keys and the creak of the front door open. Voices quickly filled the air as she and my dad began a conversation. At that moment, Jeff ran off to find a place to hide because he knew he would be punished for what he had done. I continued to sit on the floor and weep as the blood mixed in with my tears. I picked myself up and slowly made my way into the hallway and down the stairs to the area where my mom and dad were talking.

"M-mommy", I stuttered, standing in the middle of the stairs. She turned and looked at me in horror. With her motherly instincts she picked me up off the few remaining steps and pulled me close to her as her eyes followed the gash in my eyebrow to the drops of blood on my shirt.

"What happened to you? Who did this to you?" she asked me in Creole, choking on her words.

"J-Jeff" I stuttered as I pointed to the stairs indicating that he was somewhere in the house hiding.

She frowned. She pulled out a handful of tissues and tried cleaning up the blood, but no matter how many times she wiped it, the wound continued to bleed. She decided to take me to the doctor. We left Jeff at home alone because he wouldn't come out from wherever he was hiding; my mom and dad had no time to look for him.

Upon arriving at the doctor's, they rushed me into the examination room and examined me and bandaged my wound with a gauze pad that was glued on so my eyebrow would heal in the next few days. I never had such a terrifying doctor visit before. Arriving back at home, my brother was scolded for doing something so childish and quickly apologized to me and I took up his offer to play his video games for the next few days.

The next day at school I expected my friends and classmates to make fun of me but to my surprise they were all concerned about what happened and wanted to know my story. I never had a story to tell before so I decided to share it. I never talked so openly before about something so personal that happened to me. That day, I might have walked around feeling a little embarrassed about wearing a huge pad on my face, but I wore it with a smile and pride. After a few days, the bandages were removed. I examined my face in the mirror and noticed a thin scar. The hair in my eyebrow on that scar line never regrew.

Through the years, I have continued to explain the story behind my scar to whoever I meet. I am reminded of the accident that I went through because of something Carol Brunett once said, "Nobody goes through life without a scar". I look in the mirror and admire my thin scar because it reminds me of how much people care about me. Through my story, I was able to open myself up a bit more to the people around me and break out of my shyness into the outgoing person I am today. I realized how fortunate I am to have a family that can help me when I need it. Not many children and teens a kind and loving family like I do. Even when you think that something terrible has happened, it can have a great outcome. Every scar has a story; and my scar is one of the many things that make me who I am.