But I am going to tell you my only scar story

*

Do you see it?

It’s a 52-year-old relic.

That is attached to a 75-year-old artifact.

Who earned it for what, thankfully, has become an anachronistic practice.

If two of my mates and I from the Iowa Annie Wittenmyer Home in 1972 were chasing a shark and telling scar tales, this would be mine.

*

Steven was 12 years old. Like all the kids in the cottage, he had been in trouble with the law and taken away from his parents.

I read their case histories at night, toward the end of my 4 — midnight shift. Nothing in my middle-class sheltered life prepared me for their problems.

This was my first job after college. Two staff members, a man, and a woman, cared for twenty children, ten boys and ten girls, during each eight-hour stint. We were unskilled childcare workers whose primary job was to maintain order.

I majored in Sociology and earned a teacher’s certificate after completing student teaching in the spring of 1972. The Wittenmyer job was to tide me over until my first teaching job, which would come five months later. I would be as clueless in that job as I was with these troubled young people.

*

The Annie Wittenmyer facility had been an orphanage during America’s Civil War. By the 1960s, the complex had become a juvenile detention center. I was assigned to a unit with middle-level security, meaning kids could only go outside with permission. There were no guards or guns, but doors were always locked.

When someone misbehaved and did not settle down, we locked them up. Yes, that’s what we did. Worse, this lock-up room was on the second floor, up a narrow set of stairs, and the door opened inside rather than outside. More on that in a moment.

Many of these kids had a problem with impulse control. Someone or something would trigger their anger, which would then escalate. I don’t remember why, but this happened to Steven one day. We had one tool in our kit.

He was average-sized and rotund, with glasses that didn’t fit properly. The poor guy’s face was beet-red. But I couldn’t calm him down. So I wrapped my arms around his torso and lugged him up the stairs while he kicked and screamed. The cell was at the top of the stairs, with the door open to the inside.

I hauled Steven across the hallway and pushed him inside. He lunged toward the door as I pulled my right arm out of the doorway, wedging it shut on my middle finger.

*

It could have been worse.

Ten stitches closed the burst fingertip. I was back to work in two days. After it healed, it tingled for a few years.

Most importantly, Steven was not sent to one of the maximum security units. That often happened after an outburst.

*

I worked at Wittenmyer for a few more months before I took my first teaching job. I don’t remember lugging another kid up those stairs.

I don’t know what happened to Steven. Already, at twelve, he had one strike against him.

A few years later, I met another of my charges outside an employment office in another city. We chatted for a bit. He was now a young man and seemed to be on an upward path. I asked him what he remembered about his time at Wittenmyer. He said it gave him some structure and a few social skills.

Occasionally, I look at the little scar in the middle of my right middle finger.

It reminds me how some scars are more profound than others.

____________________________________________________________________________________