I think a great gift for new parents would be stock options in Band-Aid. Let’s face it: if you have a young kid, Band-Aids are practically an accessory. They come in different sizes and skin tones – though I still have to wonder who has a Sponge-Bob-patterned epidermis.
In my early days of parenting, I was anti-Band-Aids. Tough kids don’t need ‘em, I reasoned. So I made a rule: no Band-Aids unless you’re bleeding.
I thought this was quite clever, and it worked well enough when my twins were two. Our consumption of Band-Aids was below average. The rule enabled us to rake in a savings of about fourteen cents a month, enough to buy 1½ mojos.
When my cretins were nearly four, however, the Scrimp-on-Band-Aids, Save-for-College theory went south. One warm spring day, we went to the front yard where Vivian and William played with sidewalk chalk, which is the perfect craft for an Anti-Craft Mom like me since it involves no clean up (unless your kid runs onto the road and gets schmucked). But I digress.
So there William and Vivian were, playing hopscotch on their crooked squares. I think I was flinging grape-sized gravel off our lawn. And then came the screams. I don’t even remember which kid it was, but there was a knee injury. I inspected it, lest the screams make the neighbours suspicious.
“Mommy,” my child sobbed. “I need a Band-Aid.”
The knee looked like classic rug burn: pink and inflamed but not bleeding. “No blood, no Band-Aid,” I said.
I went back to flinging gravel pieces.
I’m not sure how much time passed until I noticed my kids were abnormally quiet.
I looked up and saw them huddled together, inspecting something closely.
I walked over.
Both twins were using their fingernails, scratching Twin A’s sidewalk scrape.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” they chimed, the mantra of the guilty.
“Are you picking the scrape?” I asked.
Four eyes looked up at me. One voice answered, “We’re trying to make it bleed.”
“So I can get a Band-Aid,” the other added.
Excellent. Another parenting strategy that failed. I am a mother who encourages masochistic behaviour. That’s up there with my plan to bring two kids to Build-a-Bear to buy one kid a stuffed animal.
Thankfully tomorrow is another day, which means there’s a small possibility that I’ll do things right and a large possibility that I’ll do something that fast tracks us to family therapy.
Those kids are geniuses! I never would have thought to try to make it bleed! Yeah, we tried that rule at our house, but daddy is a sucker for a pretty face, so she pretty much gets the band-aid whenever she wants.
Geniuses? Perhaps in the mess-with-our-mother type of way. I’m all for handing out Band-Aids indiscriminately. They’re a cheap source of silence. Thanks for commenting!
This is too funny!!! We have that same rule at our house, luckily we haven’t had any self mutilation for the sake of a Band-Aid. But my youngest will probably think like that, he’s so destructive lol
“Self-mutilation” is the precise word I was looking for when I used “masochistic.” May your house be filled with many un-used Band-Aids (just noticed we’re running dangerously low…)
Freaking hillarious.
My mom was like that: no blood, no bandaid. She was a nurse, and we had to be REALLY REALLY injured before we could be so bold as to ‘waste’ medical resources.
I, on the other hand, learned early on to be free with the bandaids, in favour of their tranquility and my sanity.
Oh, and PS:
My overly-entrepreneurial nephew used to pull his own teeth so that he could get fast cash from tooth fairy. Ya, my sister was pretty proud of that one.
Pulling your own teeth? Hilarious. Fast track that boy to the MBA program!
Those kids are going to be running the world one day. Genius. Absolute genius!
That really is sharp! I can’t believe your kid figured out that scab picking = bleeding which then in turn = bandaid. And of course with the influx of cartoon character bandaids, forget it! Kids go bananas for those!