When I was a boy, I took stairs one at a time. Actually, it was worse than that; I had to have both feet on a step before I would progress to the next. In time, my older brother beat that reluctance out of me. One day I was taking too long to descend, so he educated me about both force and gravity in one memorable object lesson. The stairs were concrete, save for the patch of forehead skin that I donated to them that day. I bled, and thus I cried. But never again did I take stairs one at a time – at least not in front of my brother.

I’ve had a hate-love relationship with pain over the years in that I used to hate it, and I suspect that someday I will love it. As it stands right now, I respect it, but I readily challenge it. There is no more fear. Pain is experience and I crave experience. The only pain I refuse to embrace is that which I cannot chart, that which creeps in, seemingly for no reason, and leaves of its own accord, with no lesson learned. For instance, I would much rather stare down the headlights of a car and wake up in the hospital than have a migraine. I don’t know why. I think it has something to do with my fascination of scars.

Before we go any further, let’s establish one important fact: I do not have an addiction to pain. However, I truly believe that pain has an addiction to me. And I believe that he likes to make a fool of me. I mean, there were dozens of other people in the church basement – why did the enormous jumble of keys have to hit me in the testicles? And I could ask the same question about the skateboard. And the puck. And the wooden dance shoe. I sure hope my kids don’t come out bruised. But seriously, pain seems to have it in for me, so I like to overcome him as often as I can. So how do you thwart a bully that you can’t hit back? Well, for starters, you keep getting up.

In preparation for this article, I stripped naked, shaved my entire body, and highlighted every one of my scars with a Sharpie marker. This undertaking was incredibly nostalgic, as I pored over physical reminders of my folly. I have entitled the end product The Diary of a Fool: