Coffee table poll

Is there anything other than sweat and tears on your skin?

(Tattoos, piercings, scars, birthmarks, etc.?) Is there a story behind them?

Compiled by:

Tuire Luomala

I have a birthmark on my left arm. A funny detail is that my late uncle had a very similar-looking and similar-sized birthmark in exactly the same place.

Nickname: Car Man

I wear a lot of make-up on my skin. Unlike most people, the older I get, the more make-up I wear. I love wearing make-up because the colours are beautiful. I also like to paint on canvases (with acrylics), but when it comes to face make-up, I have to keep the colour palette a bit more subdued. Or at least that’s what I’ve always thought.

Nickname: Brush Hero

I had chicken pox when I was 12 years old. It was really bad, and I still have faint scars on my face. And there seems to be a scar on my wrist. However, I have a really giant scar on my side that cannot go unnoticed.

Nickname: Ravaged by the Pox

I have a scar on my left knee from an “accident” that happened when I was about eight years old. I was playing with my cousin on the floor when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my knee, and I couldn’t bend my leg anymore. With a dead-straight leg, I went to the doctor, and they took X-rays of my knee. It turned out that there was a thin needle in my knee, which I had crawled on! The needle was removed under local anaesthetic, after which the doctor asked me if I wanted the needle as a souvenir. I did not.

Nickname: Not in a Haystack This Time

I stubbed a cigarette on my hand when I was in upper secondary school, as I didn’t have the money to get a tattoo. My boyfriend at the time did the same thing to his own hand. The scar is a permanent circular reminder of the romantic idea. And the boyfriend has turned into my husband and friend with a similar scar on his own hand.

Nickname: A Centimetre-High Blister

As a child, we usually had a lot of snow fights and serious ones. One time, my friend thought it was a good idea to use an old, rusty shovel as equipment. Long story short, the handle of the shovel was slippery, and it ended up with the whole shovel flying straight into my face, making a hole in my upper lip. It took a while before I even noticed that a lot of the snow around me had turned red, because I was so into the snow war frenzy, but hey, at least I won the snow war! And got a nice prize in the form of a small scar right under my nose How the shovel did not break my nose, I will never know, but thank God for that.

Nickname: Snow King