What's the deal with this scar?

For years I've had this mark on my left shoulder, the one pictured above. It looks like a crater or, as Kristin says, as if a burning spiked Froot Loop had been pressed into my flesh. Why anybody would do that, or how anybody could actually set fire to a Froot Loop are questions best left for another day.

I've had the mark for as long as I can remember. I'm sure at some point I asked my parents about it, found out what it was, and stored the knowledge somewhere in a compartment of my brain.

Eventually that compartment filled up and my brain began jettisoning old information so it could store new, more important things. Like Springsteen's birthday (Sept. 23, 1949 -- and, no, I did not have to Google it) or that Pete Rose got the first hit at the Metrodome, though it came during an exhibition game (I did double-check after I wrote it. But I was right. It happened on April 3, 1982, so you'll have to scroll down a bit in the link).

Anyway, back to this scar. Kristin has asked me about it from time to time, and I think at one point I told her it was some sort of vaccination scar. But I wasn't sure what it was for.

Tonight she asked again. And since I didn't have anything to blog about and I had my laptop with me, I did an Internet image search on vaccination scars. I came up with this, but be warned -- some of the images are rather disgusting.

I noticed one that looked similar to mine and found out the vaccination was for smallpox. Back when I was a little kid, getting the vaccine was routine. But Kristin doesn't have a similar scar because the vaccinations stopped in 1972, the year she was born. At that point the disease had been eradicated in the United States.

The mystery is solved. So not only will I always remember my scar is from a smallpox vaccination, I'll never forget the guy who had the first hit in Metrodome history -- Ted Williams. Wait, that's not right. Dammit.