When you marry late in life there’s a lot to learn about the other person. Dear Richard and I got talking about skating last weekend, a subject we hadn’t explored. Turns out he had spent a lot of his teen years roller skating while I was more of an ice skater. I even told him about the scar incident.

I spent many wintry days of my childhood and teen years on frozen ponds, probably the most fun I ever had in cold weather. I wish I could still do it today, but this old shell I occupy is susceptible to cracking if dropped.

My white Canadian figure skates hung in the backdoor coat closet for 27 years – but any hope they’d glide back into action evaporated after my first knee replacement. One scar from skating has been enough through my lifetime.

In my hometown I skated on a frozen marsh called Mead’s Meadow. Afternoons and weekends at Mead’s were firmly divided into boys’ and girls’ groups by the time I was in sixth grade. One mean boy, who picked on girls only, decided I needed some time face down on the ice. While I stood talking to a friend he approached from behind, reached down, grabbed the back of my left skate blade and yanked. As I fell forward, trying desperately to gain some balance, my left knee was opened from side to side by the back of the right blade. The trail of blood to the pond’s edge was wide. Some friends pulled me the three blocks into town on a sled. To this day the scar is a large eyebrow across my left kneecap.

The one skiing scar (now THAT was a LOT of blood) is on my right shin. Most of that red trail was left freezing by the towline while I was taken to the E.R. for stitching and clamping.

As I thought about the scars we add during an active lifetime I took a personal inventory. I was amazed at just how many identifying marks I’ve acquired. In my case it has been either natural-born clumsiness or systemic complications. The FBI would need an additional sheet in my file just to list the surface markings, but then the I.D. would certainly be positive. No one else could have this exact combination . . . proof of treachery, daredevilry and mechanical failure.

For some people butcher knives are hazardous, for others it’s motorcycles or skateboards. Adventuress that I am, my big danger was pencils. There’s a piece of graphite in my left index finger – some third grade stupidity that I was too chicken to have removed. There’s another one in my right thigh, the result of jumping over a hedge with a pencil in my pocket. The third one is in my right hip, the result of the sharp, new pencil that we were using to keep score during a Travel Scrabble game.

We were vacationing, en route to Copenhagen, when I returned to my seat from the lavatory. I didn’t notice before I sat down that the pencil was jammed in the corner of the seat point up. When I plopped down the pencil went in almost three inches and snapped off, forcing me to swallow a screech.

Tom took one look at me and said, “What’s wrong, you look like you’ve been stabbed.”

Nodding wildly, wide-eyed and unable to speak, I tried desperately to stand up, not knowing what had happened. When I finally got to my feet, he looked, then moaned, “Oh no,” turning white as a sheet, as usual, at the sight of blood. Lottsa blood.

The SAS flight attendant was very unsympathetic to my plight. He reluctantly parted with the gauze from his first-aid kit, but no kindness.

I could not reach the third of a pencil which had literally impaled me. Eventually ground personnel directed me to a pharmacy in Copenhagen. Since we were unable to remove all of the pencil, my infection and I wound up a few days later as a guest of Denmark’s health system. When they told me they got everything but the graphite I said I could live with it – I’d just add it to my collection.

Let me see, the other small identifying marks – the thorny rose bush stem that laid open my cheek as it whipped out from where I’d tied it. The chunk of finger that I snipped in half misjudging the length of the scissors I was cutting the crepe paper with. And then there’s the scattered evidence of the surgeons’ profession.

One baby and various maladies have left my abdomen resembling a map through eastern Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad . . . three parallel lines and a siding. ‘Nuf said.

Then there’s Doctor Zorub’s handiwork at both the top and bottom of my spine, a quarter century apart. 25 years after he fixed two discs in my neck, Doc looked at the scar across my throat and declared it a pretty neat piece of surgery: “Some of my best work.” Two years ago he added another 8-inch line at the bottom of my back. I’d never have seen this one without Dear Richard’s cell phone camera.

It was orthopedic surgeons, not neurosurgeons who left my most visible scars – twelve inches on the left knee, ten on the right. It’s okay – my miniskirt days are long gone and so many people have replaced knees that joint scars are badges of triumph among the AARP set.

All in all, scars create a one-of-a-kind body of evidence. As I took my inventory – a subject I never imagined being interested in, I realized that every scar we wear has a story . . . a few of them dramatic but most humorous given the perspective of many years. And just like the litany of a hypochondriac, no one else really cares.

Oops! In terms of disfigurement, I forgot to mention the fascinating knobs and spurs of my arthritic joints. What, you don’t want to hear about them either? I understand . . . there’s absolutely no comedy stories there.