"Hold these together for me while I get some more nails," Ken says, "don't let it slip."

     I put my shoulder to the sheetrock and try to hold it wedged against the one already nailed up. It is not resting against anything at the bottom edge to stabilize it. Bracing myself with my feet to apply more pressure I notice again the large, round scar on the back of my right calf just below the knee. It's so darn ugly but time is finally taking some of the reddish purple out of it. I suppose eventually it will look like all the rest of my scars and be hardly noticeable.

     Ken returns with his nails. "Aw! You let it slip!" he accuses, manhandling the unwieldy piece back into place and driving his first nail. It's true, it had slipped but I definitely had not let it! As if I had let that stupid dog bite me in the leg. These things just happen sometimes in spite of our best efforts. For a change I chose not to argue the point and went back to the dishes in the kitchen.

     What we need are butterflies. All sizes to cover all circumstances. To hold things in place for us. Unlike the scar on my leg, I have a scar on my bottom that's relatively small despite its original size. That's because of the butterflies.

     The girls had loaded up Ken's old 4x4, 3/4 ton pickup for our daily trip to County Fair. We already had all of our animals in place and today the girls had cooking and presentation contests. I would be doing hands-on craft demonstrations and we were running late (as usual). I tossed my purse on the seat, put a toe on the running board and hauled myself up, shoving my purse out of my way with my hip.

     "Ouch!" I cried, from a sharp stabbing pain in my bottom.

     "What's wrong?" both girls demanded.

     I slid forward and my purse followed me. When I pulled it away, the culprit was clearly visible: an Exacto knife in my purse was protruding through the bottom and when I pushed my purse out from under me as I climbed in, the blade had sunk in full-depth. I thought I was bleeding.

     "You sat on an Exacto knife!" Karen hooted in dismay. Both girls were immediately overcome by laughter.

     "That was really dumb, Mom!" Sarah declared amid her giggles.

     "Thanks a lot for all your concern," I responded, getting back out of the truck.

     "Mom," they howled, "we're going to be late!"

     "Well I can't very well go 'till I see how bad it is. I'll be right back. I just need to get a Bandaid on it."

     "What are you doing back?" Ken asked as I opened the door. "Aren't you running late already?" I didn't answer but headed straight into the bathroom. When I tried to see the cut, though, I couldn't. I turned to the mirror. It looked pretty bad but from the mirror I couldn't actually see how deep it was. As I probed, it began to bleed rather profusely.

     "Ken, come here." I called, "I think I need your help." Then I had to explain to him what had happened and listen to more laughter. My family was so sympathetic.

     "You probably need stitches," he said after a closer inspection of my bottom. He couldn't even keep a straight face. This was really embarrassing.

     "I don't have time. Besides, it's a razor cut so it ought to heal fine. I don't need you to stand around guffawing like an idiot, I need you to put a couple of butterflies on it to hold it together!" I snapped.

     "Man," he said as he carefully cleaned the blood off and applied two large-size butterflies, "I really ought to fill out an incident report on this. Particularly if you disregard my advice to get stitches. I should document that. Just to protect our fannies." He almost choked on his own pun.

     "Don't you dare!" I cried, turning to face him. He was grinning from ear to ear. We were both medics for our local volunteer fire department. The medics were all a close-knit group. We had gone through training together and shared an easy friendship. Every-other week we went over all of our calls and patient assessment sheets in order to improve our skills and share any problems we had experienced.

     "Go on," he said, "or you'll be late." He patted me on the bottom like usual.

     "Ow! Watch it!" I warned.

     "I already did," he smirked.

     Fortunately the dress I was wearing was a madras plaid and the blood didn't show. I made it through that day and the next few with only minor discomfort as the slice began to heal fine just as I predicted.

     A week later when we arrived at the fire department, several others were already there. Run sheets were spread out over the table but the meeting had not yet started. Paul looked up as we entered.

     "Hey," he said, "glad you guys made it. Say Margaret," he eyed me speculatively, "I understand you got a butterfly on your hip." The room experienced an epidemic of smirking. It must be contagious.

     "No, it's not on my hip," I answered, "it's squarely on my butt. Want to see?" I was pretty sure that would put an end to it. Although my now size 18 fanny was much smaller then, maybe a size 10, I certainly didn't go around showing it to people (OK, OK, reality check, probably a size 14, but hey, I'm telling the story). I was not amused by the fad of mooning and I was usually quite modest.

     "Sure!" he answered, "can't wait." Smirking even louder now.

     "Eat your hearts out guys," I was flippant. "only the attending physician gets a second peek. And only if he remembers its there and stops patting me on the bottom!" I added, turning to Ken, "And only if he learns how to keep his mouth shut!"

     The next week the butterflies came off, having done an admirable job of holding things together. Every once in a while when Ken has his arms around me, his fingers will linger on that bump of a scar and he asks, "What's that?" I've never been able to see his face when he does it, though, so I'm not sure if he's actually forgotten or if he's still smirking . . .