All little kids have cute noses when they are too young to care. Even I started out with a smidge of a nose, as grade school photographs testify. By adolescence, however, it had been transformed into a prominently unsmidgey facial feature, shocking me when I caught a glimpse of myself in profile. While not the stereotypical 

Nevertheless, out of some preteen hippie feminist idealism, I made my peace with it. I told myself it was part of my Individuality. I certainly didn't want to get it bobbed into a little pig nose as had so many of the girls at my Hebrew school. Thus, when my parents offered to get me a nose job for my fourteenth birthday, I was greatly offended. My nose was me! They should love me for me!!  

I weakened enough to make a preliminary visit to the plastic surgeon to look at his book of noses, but I was too proud to be cute, after all. And my nose was really the least of my worries what with being too fat and too ugly and stuck with a personality that was little more than a writhing mass of overamped emotions and insecurity. Then something amazing happened.     When I was in my early twenties, living in Austin, Texas, coming out of a relationship with a former ice hockey player, I decided to take up ice hockey. I don't know why I waited until after the relationship, or when I had moved down South where there is no ice and very little interest in this sport. The league I joined played at the only ice rink in town, which was at a shopping mall. Not only was it a men's league, but most of the men were IBM employees who had recently been transferred to Texas from Toronto. Canadians, for God's sake. Real hockey players.  

Having never seriously ice skated in my life, my main contribution to the team was that I maneuvered so poorly and fell down so often that our opponents became distressed and confused and often had to plan their strategy around my inconveniently prone body. The spectators, of course, loved me. And so it went until one day, in a rare vertical moment, a flying puck hit me in the face. In the nose, to be exact. The guy I was sleeping with on the team, Lars, had to drive me home. By morning, I definitely looked like a hockey player.     The swelling eventually went down, but my nose was more unsightly than ever. Broad, partly flattened, it zigged and zagged across my face. Though I did not seek medical treatment at the time (I had Lars treat me for the pain at home on my couch), the broken nose ended my hockey career for that, and all subsequent seasons. Still, I got a lot of mileage out of my brief moment on the ice, and found excuses to dress up in my full hockey regalia, such as a poetry reading at a lesbian bar. And I often broke into a little riff demonstrating my favorite play, the submarine check, rushing down the sidewalk and squatting to show how I tripped up the opponent.  

Thus came my second hockey accident, which occurred not on the ice but on a sidewalk downtown. During one of my infamous hockey exhibitions, I collided with a fire hydrant, causing enough damage to my knee to wind up in the emergency room. There I met a cute orderly named Johnny Caputo, who took in my knee and my nose with some amusement. He said I really should get my nose fixed, as its mangled conformation could cause me respiratory problems in later life. And he introduced me to the emergency room plastic surgeon, who agreed that I had damage enough that plastic surgery would be considered reconstructive, not cosmetic — important for my pride, as well as for the insurance company.     And so I entered the world of rhinoplasty, and, I must confess, ended up with the nose of my dreams. Straight, cute, not too big, not too small — when I see pictures of myself from the side, I can hardly believe it! Ironically, my attempts at toughness, at coaxing out my inner guy, made it possible for me to give in to my most girlish yearnings for facial perfection, through what I suppose can only be called the ultimate lucky break.  

Marion Winik is most recently the author of "First Comes Love," a memoir, and is a regular commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." Winik lives in Austin, Texas.