No Strings attached

This is embarrassing. I don't pay much attention and I don't use very many of them, anyway, but I just noticed this the other day. I was feeding a squirrel at home off my back stoop (landing is what we call them here in New England, 'stoop' is what we called them in Nu Yawk and Joisey and it's been a lot of years, and still hardly a day, simultaneously). Because my hand shakes (one of those 'when you buy a ticket, you get the whole ride' aspects of aging of which I'm so fond) one of the squirrels stood on its back legs and used its paws to hold steadier a finger and the thumb of my right hand, which was holding a peanut.

Despite the hundreds of Nails 'N' More places within the sound of my voice across this area, I am surrounded by squirrels who don't believe in manicures, or maybe it's pedicures. In steadying my hand, the animal inadvertently scratched me. And pulling my hand back very quickly in surprise didn't do much for those trust issues these rats with better press clippings and I have with one another.

There was the tiniest drop of blood, one on each finger but in just a goofy enough place to make getting Band-Aids on them important (and I can't believe anyone thinks the website needs a 'where to buy' button! Is there a store on earth that doesn't sell them?). I apologize if you do not call all adhesive bandages Band-Aids-you should. Unless, unlike me, you didn't grow up near New Brunswick, New Jersey, which is the international headquarters of Johnson & Johnson (don't ever use 'and' instead of the ampersand, okay?). When we were young marrieds and shopping in the BX, base exchange, out at Rhein Main AB, my German wife bought somebody else's brand of Band-Aids. I missed it at the checkout, but went back the next day and corrected the error.

I grew up with the thin red string that you used to open the wrapper on the Band-Aid whose "Sterility is guaranteed unless seal is broken" (or perhaps if the walrus is hobbled. I knew it wasn't that kind of seal, but always wondered how many people actually read the Band-Aid wrapper). So I opened the medicine cabinet (that has everything but, now that I think about it. I even keep my tie clip on the bottom shelf. The bathroom is where I put on my game face and work clothes and tie my tie (raffles always promise 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties', but I've yet to get close to one of those raffles)) and grabbed the Neosporin and the box of Band-Aids, ready to give NO quarter to any bacteria as I repaired my fingers). I didn't know until just now, both are made by the same people. (I lead a very sheltered life, it seems.)

And, wow-maybe you already knew this. My wife reacted with a shrug and a 'it happened years ago' observation, but the J&J Band-Aids don't have the skinny red string anymore! What happened and when (and why)? Did I miss the memo--should I fire off a note to the J&J people (with my fingers in their current state, how much will that delay the healing process)? This is like discovering Lincoln's Gettysburg Address actually begins with, "Yo, Peeps!", that a kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first and throw the chocolate cookie outsides away (it makes more sense my way) or that the AFLAC duck isn't related to either Donald or Daffy (proving, again, that while all ducks are birds, NOT all birds are ducks. Which way did he go, George?)

My chagrin at discovering the packaging change is tempered by the realization that in all of my years of scrapped knees and elbows-it was Mom who opened the Band-Aids. I never could figure out how to use the red string to open them and always wound up pulling it completely out, leaving me to tear the wrapper open with my fingers. If I'd saved those red strings I'd have enough, probably, to make a tunic like the ones worn by those Beefeaters we see in the pictures at Buckingham Palace. If they played soccer against the Vatican Swiss Guard, who do you think would win? (and do the latter have knives and do the former drink gin?) Would the match be decided in regulation, or would we have to go to Penalty Kicks? And do you hate PKs as much as I do? It's like deciding a baseball game, tied up after nine innings, with a home run derby.

Anyway. Yeah, I managed to pull apart the new (to me) Band-Aid wrapper, reassured that at least the warning is intact (it's like that other constant in my childhood universe, the 'do not remove this tag' from the couch cushions. I could have sent my Gramma and Grampy to jail for years if the Couch Cushion Cops had shown up, let me tell you). Of course, by the time I got the Band-Aid opened, my wife had the aerosol out, the one you just spray the adhesive bandage on and was back making dinner before I could even protest. You have to love that German technology, especially if you run out of places to store the red strings.
-bill kenny