If you don't have scars you aren't a real man

If you aren’t a real man, can you have scars?

Are scars necessary and sufficient for declaring manhood?

I know this is a tongue-in-cheek topic, but here's an honest response.

I tore my rotator cuff in a sporting fall when i was out training on a slippery downhill trail a few years ago. I had to go in for the full surgery to re-connect it, and yes i have a scar that i no one would ever think twice about.

That's doodlie -squat.

But the whole experience in the medical field revealed how much competitive sports toughens you and me up so that things like this are not a big deal.

I dealt with a top notch, well know sports surgeon in the area and every interaction i had with him reinforced what i am saying. First, he said i should do just fine because my muscle tissue was in really good condition ( i lift), and the ones that have trouble are the couch potatoes. Then the nurse told me at the outset that i would do just fine, and when i asked her how she knew which ones would do fine, she said the ones that don't are the ones that come in cowering and moaning and generally wincing before they were ever touched.

Going into the surgery was nothing, and to me, i knew it wasn't going to be any worse than a really hard race, and probably less so because i was out.

The only bad part was the narcotics they gave me for when the anesthesia wore off - i couldn't handle the loopiness and only took one dose, took advil instead for 2 days and then stopped that as well.

When i asked the surgeon afterwards when we would start physical therapy, he said i wouldn't need it. I asked why, and he said, the challenge with me would be to hold me back from doing too much too soon and thereby re-injuring myself (and i did not re-injure, btw).

When i came back for a follow-up visit, about all we did was a 3 minute exam and 20 minutes of me telling him stories about competing.

So, in truth, the scars aren't what makes anyone a man. But if you are an athlete in earnest, from my experience, you may not realize it, but you are probably way more hard-@ss than you know. That;'s probably one of the benefits that gets easily overlooked, but it is very real.

i have a scar on my right forearm where hot steam burned me from a steam leak but I tell sloots that it was from a mexican knife fight

The OP screwed up a good idea by doubling up on the disconnection.