The Universal Fix-It: The Band-Aid

My toddler, like all toddlers and all children, loves Band-Aids. She regularly critiques the selection of Band-Aids in our medicine cabinet. Typically, there's a good three or four boxes in rotation, from SpongeBob to Scooby.

Last night, I left the medicine cabinet open while we were brushing our teeth before bed, and she spied a fresh box of Disney Princess Band-Aids. The brush dropped from her hand and she exclaimed, "You bought PRINCESS Band-Aids? I love Princess Band-Aids!"

Naturally, once she found this fresh offering, she was suddenly covered in boo-boos. Most are invisible. Some are described as "huge" or "hurting". All are in need of a Band-Aid.

Last night, she presented a dried scab on her pointer finger, and I dutifully covered it with a Princess Band-Aid. And then her other hand mysteriously developed a boo-boo: the kind that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Nevertheless, a Band-Aid is not worth fighting over and makes her happy, so I applied a Band-Aid and we went to bed.

In the middle of the night, I awoke to AC poking me and screaming about the Band-Aid. It was in her hair. She insisted that I cut it, and in the dark, I fumbled to feel for the Band-Aid in her hair. Sure enough, I felt it twisted in her locks. I told her that it was okay and we would fix it in the morning. She told me it was not okay, and that I needed to cut her hair.

At this point, I was really tired. Not just a little bit tired, but dead exhausted. It was 3:30 in the morning. My three-year-old was demanding a haircut. In bed. At 3:30 in the morning.

In the interest of getting back to sleep quickly, I got the scissors and obliged. I scarcely remember the act, only that I tried to snip it as quickly as possible, avoiding as much collateral damage as possible. Then we both went back to sleep.

When I woke up this morning, the memory came back to me: I cut my three-year-old's hair in the dark at 3:30 in the morning to free her from a stuck-on Band-Aid. Before I even rolled over, I cringed, imagining the result.

Fortunately, there was little damage. In fact, I could hardly tell, though I was very tired this morning and might see a difference when I look at the 3-in-the-morning hairdo tonight. If worse comes to worse and it is noticeable, I will have no choice but to lie and tell people that she cut her own hair, because to admit that you cut your toddler's hair in the middle of the night in the dark is not socially acceptable.

This morning, AC requested another Band-Aid, to cover the gaping empty spot on her hand. I let her select her Band-Aid, and wondered to myself...if it's this easy to placate a child, why isn't there a universal Band-Aid for adults? Is it because most wounds that adults endure are emotional, and a proverbial Band-Aid would never fall off, because those wounds never heal, and everyone would eventually just be a walking Band-Aid?

Ouchie! I Need a Band-Aid, Please!

When AC was very young, she loved the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". It was virtually the only song I knew with hand gestures that didn't include the middle finger or Satan's horns, so we sang Itsy a lot. She became so well-versed in Itsy that she could do the hand motions by seven months old. Perhaps the cutest pic I have of her is sitting in a laundry basket, hands stretched above her head, imitating the climbing up the waterspout portion of the song.

At the height of AC's Itsy phase, I found an adorable board book based on the rhyme of Itsy, with a new rhyme on each page. My favorite was the rhyme where Itsy fell down and shrieked, "Ouchie! I need a Band-Aid, please!". Of course, based on the fact that Itsy has eight legs, she requested eight Band-Aids, but her mother only had six.

I, too, am having an eight Band-Aid sorta day. The day started out smashingly, with me packing up a bunch of my ex-husband's stuff, a task I refer to as "taking out the trash". However, after I picked up my daughter, my sadness started setting in. Holidays are never good for the newly-single girl. Your usual support system is gone, caught up in their own families and new boys.

As the icing on my heartbreak cake, I said goodbye to an online flirtation, who is deploying to Iraq in a couple of days. Sure, deep down, I knew that it was unlikely that anything would come of it, apart from the occassional sexting exchange. But what a fool believes is that what seems to be is always better than nothing, and he was always reliable for some occassional drunk texting.

The other victim of my weekly drunk texts is a married guy I like to refer to as my "one night stand that got away". Coulda, shoulda, woulda...but even 10 years after the fact, he still likes to play my game. I consider his receipt of my infrequent drunk texts to be a true honor on his part; I doubt his wife would agree, because I have typically found that while I don't care, most wives don't wanna share.

In thinking of this--why would someone as intelligent and beautiful as me continually throw myself at Someone Else's Husband?--the answer dawned on me: I can't trust the guy. If I know I can't trust him from the start, there is no reason for me to ever build trust in him. No trust equals no heartbreak for me, because I already fully expect him to break my heart. To expect it means that essentially, your heart cannot be broken. I have equated my broken trust issues to Santa Claus: I feel like I carry it in a huge sack tossed across my shoulder. The good thing, is that just like Santa delivering his gifts, I toss out a little bit of that mistrust each and every day.

But yet, the truth always remains...after saying farewell to my brief--but steamy--online military boy, my automatic defense mechanism was to text Someone Else's Husband, even though I know he is really no different from Itsy, though far more dangerous: a poisonous spider just waiting in the corner, fulling willing to silently and slyly break his wife's heart while playing with mine.

Ouchie...I need a Band-Aid--or six, or eight--for my scraped and scuffed heart.