too many words by laura lemay

lost ring

When I was a kid I went through a phase of wearing rubber bands on my wrists. I had no particular reason for doing this, it wasn’t like a magic totem or a friendship band or a method for keeping boys away or anything. I just wore them. My mother had fits; she told me that if I didn’t stop wearing the rubber bands the skin on my wrists would grow up over the band and I would have to have it surgically removed. This had ACTUALLY HAPPENED to someone she knew, she told.

That always sounded bogus to me even when I was nine, right up there with the story of the girl who had DIED from RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. But it turns out I was wrong: here we have a woman whose skin grew over her wedding ring. Warning: graphic photographs, kind of gross. (whee!)

(I got it from metafilter).