Are we comparing bruises? My freshman year in college I crashed my bike into the football stadium. No, really. (There is a logical explanation but it's more fun to skip it.) I was on my way to marching band practice and slammed my arm/shoulder into a gate post hard enough that I was afraid at first that I had broken something. I managed to make it to practice and the people marching behind me gave me periodic updates on the color of my arm. There may have been a pool on what color it would be the next day.

Are we comparing bruises?

Batting practice, pitching around an L-screen. Everything was protected but my throwing arm. He smoked a line drive off my upper bicep and every single capillary exploded. From shoulder to elbow it was deep, grape soda purple.

Deep purple there is coming close to placing, but I still think I'm a frontrunner with the calcified groin hematoma. Bring it.

I don't think anyone can beat my friend Traci's butt bruise from, yep, falling down the narrow wood stairs at a friend's party. It was the biggest, blackest, most raised up bruise I've ever seen, and it was still super dark 4 weeks later.

I've got a pretty good bruise on my right wrist and my right upper arm, but they're pretty run of the mill. My butt didn't hurt as much as my hip, so I iced the hip/lower back for a couple of hours Monday night, but not the butt, so I think that may have made a little difference.

I think the one my mother got falling down icy stairs lasted several months.

I got the calcified hematoma, but it was more on my thigh than my groin (kicked by a horse).

I fell on one knee on a wood floor (rollerskating and you would not think wood was that hard) when I was about 14. The bruise wasn't super spectacular in size, even if it turned lovely shades of purple, green, and yellow. What it did do was leave a patch of discolored brown skin on my knee for well over ten years. It disappeared sometime in my 20s, but that thing lingered.

When I was in college I banged my shin on the corner of a metal document box. The bruise was impressive enough, but the dent in my leg lingered for over 10 years.

I got the calcified hematoma, but it was more on my thigh than my groin (kicked by a horse).

Whoa, kicked by a horse is a big deal. Ouch.

What it did do was leave a patch of discolored brown skin on my knee for well over ten years.

Huh. That's interesting. I never heard of that before!

The bruise was impressive enough, but the dent in my leg lingered for over 10 years.

Now that I've heard of, because something similar happened to me, though not from a bruise, and it didn't last an impressive ten years. When I was a teenager, I'd lean on the side of our sink to wash my face and put my contacts in and put makeup on, because I wanted to get close enough to the mirror to see myself without contacts. All that leaning on the same spot lead to a visible depression on my right thigh. My mom freaked out. According to the doctor, fat cells just vanish under pressure. It went away in a few weeks after I stopped doing that.

How funny to come in here and we're talking about bruises, when I have spent my morning cataloging the bruises I acquired all night. There's a corker on the outside of my right thigh (one of those that is all hard and takes a while to develop the color), a bunch on my inner left thigh, several on my stomach, and one on the knuckles of my right hand, like I punched someone (I didn't - I was pretty tipsy last night but not that far gone.)

Is crazy! Riding in a Mardi Gras krewe is awesome, but the actual ride is hell on the body. This year, it was worth it, though,