Childhood Misconceptions: Discovering my Mortality on my Knee (Updated)

No, that is not a typo in the title.

I was supposed to die before my twelfth birthday. I knew it as certainly as you know that you will one day break down and eat something completely unhealthy and bad for you.

I must have been about seven or eight when I noticed a scar on my left knee. I was sitting on the toilet (I know. You didn't need to know that.) when I saw this scar staring up at me. I had no recollection of acquiring the scar. This is only disturbing in the fact that to attain a scar, you need to do more than just a little damage to your skin. I suppose it could have been something truly traumatic and that's why I don't remember, but most likely it was an injury that I didn't get tended to properly and kept re-injuring it until it became a scar. That sounds much more like me.

I wanted to take a picture of it for you, but it's barely visible to the eye, making it a pointless attempt, so I made this for you:

Isn't it beautiful?

So, I gave myself shorts so that you wouldn't be scarred (haha) by a drawing of me on the toilet. And, I put myself outside on a beautiful green lawn to further enforce the idea that I'm definitely NOT on the toilet. This drawing is from my own perspective, looking down from, apparently, an incredible height. Don't pay attention to the weirdness of my cut-off foot. Yes, I really am that white.. and I apparently have a orangey-flesh outline to my skin.

So, anyway. You notice the scar on my knee? The one that looks like an 11?

I was convinced at this tender age that this scar was somehow a portent. The universe or God or my miraculous body was trying to tell me that my days were numbered. Perhaps this was when I started to understand mortality and that I wasn't somehow invincible and permanently youthful.

So, there on the toilet.. uh, lawn... I started to feel woeful for my life. I was going to die sometime on or around my 11th birthday. I felt really dramatic about it.

I would never have kids or even get married.. heck! I'd never even go on a date! Just think of all the things I wouldn't get to do...

I was secretly gleeful that I had something to be morbidly upset about.

I didn't tell anyone.

Boy, would they be sad when I was ripped from this life during my formative years. All those people (I think I knew about 20 people aside from my family) would just be traumatized for life that they had been deprived of my existence.

I remember feeling unique and wise for a while after that. I had been instantly aged by the knowledge of my own demise. Suddenly a Sage.

I don't recall if I envisioned the ways I would die. I probably figured that I would die of a broken heart.. yes.. broken heart, while plunging off the biggest cliff waterfall on Earth, on the back of the last Unicorn in existence battling the last Dragon in existence, my tears and long, beautiful hair streaming behind me like a banner of innocence and tragic love.

(Update) At my sister's request, I drew this part, too.. I call it: Epic Death

And then I forgot about it until sometime after my 11th birthday and I started thinking, "Okay, it'll be soon... No one knows what a tragic little life I have..."

Then I turned twelve and was briefly confused by my continued existence. Maybe I wasn't really twelve yet. My parents and all the medical professionals attending my birth had somehow got the year wrong.

But the years continued on, further mocking my tragic vision of myself.

In the end, I felt okay about it. I think as I was trudging through my teenage years, I realized that dying at 11 would have been rather terrible, even more terrible than High School.

Though, not by much.

If you liked this blog, I'll share another Childhood Misconception soon.