Debate for Peace

This piece, part of the Writers Matter program, comes from Melo in South Africa, and is part of the “This Scar is from” collection:

This scar is from the summer I learned that courage doesn’t always look like bravery—it sometimes looks like falling hard, crying loud, and standing up anyway.

I was nine years old, knees scraped more often than not, running wild through the school play ground afterschool with a confidence only kids know. One afternoon, I dared myself to jump from the top of the old school slide while everyone else was just sliding normally down the hot slide. It was those tall, metal slide that became boiling hot in the afternoon and burned your legs in the sun and groaned under your weight. Obviously it was dumb to jump down. But in that moment, I wasn’t trying to be careful. I wanted to land without suffering on the hot slide or climb down like some 8 year old coward. Everyone else was playing on the ground, leaving the slide. All the teachers on watch didn’t pay attention to the slide because barely anyone was on it. So as soon as I saw a clear landing point, I took a deep breath and jumped.

Unfortunately, as my feet were off the surface my shoelaces were actually lose and got caught on the edge– stuck. So I didn’t soar—I slammed hard on the floor, unable to get my feet on the ground on time. My right knee hit the gravel hard, tearing open skin on impact. Blood poured, and so did the tears. I remember a few kids surrounding me, the embarrassment, the sting, the smell of rust and heat, the way the world narrowed to that single point of pain. I remember one of the teachers running across the grass, her face a mixture of fear and frustration.

They cleaned the wound, stitched it at the clinic, and told me not to pick at the scab. I did, of course. More than once. The scar stayed. At first, I hated it. It was ugly. It made shorts embarrassing. It reminded me that I didn’t fly—I fell. But as the years went on, I came to see it differently. That scar wasn’t just a mark from a clumsy jump. It was proof that I tried something bold. That I failed quite miserably. That I got back up.

Looking at it now, I don’t remember the pain as clearly. But I remember the lesson: sometimes the only way to learn your limits is to push them. Sometimes courage means being reckless enough to leap—and strong enough to heal when you land hard. This scar, right there on my knee, tells that story. And I carry it proudly.