Scabs are Cool, Cartoons... Not So Much

Son#2 fell off his razor scooter yesterday and turned his knee into hamburger meat. Of course the new word in the house now is… pus. I’m just waiting for them to start calling each other wonderful names like ‘pus bucket’ or ‘pus face’. It’s coming. I’m no fool.

After I cleaned his knee off, I was searching for band aids. For the first time I can remember, we were out. For the longest time, band aids were THE thing to buy. If everyone wanted to buy something at Publix, picking out their own box of band-aids seemed to satisfy them. Go figure. Harry Potter, Veggie Tales, Winnie the Pooh, Sponge Bob, Sesame Street, just to name a few. If there is a cartoon character, they have a band aid. (The Harry Potter band aids have stars that glow in the dark. We went through more of those damn band aids. I found a kid hiding in a closet once with band aids stuck all over him just so he could see himself glow stars.)

Now, however, we are getting older, and we have to be particular about the band aids we have lest we not look cool. Whereas I could not care less and will just as soon walk around town with an Ernie band aid with the ABCs listed at the bottom, the boys would just as soon die. I remember being at work once and one of the engineers I was working with had daughters. He cut his finger and the only band aid in the house he could find was Barbie. Here is this cute manly man with a Barbie band aid. But when you have kids, and you are really secure in yourself, you really don’t care. You really don’t.

As for the boys, band aids are almost out. They love to show off their scabs and my eldest loves to have blood oozing from his knee. It’s cool. Of course the teachers hate it, surprise, and always send him down to get it covered in the make shift clinic we have at our temporary school. So scabs, blood and pus are cool. Veggie Tale band aids are not.

Which brings me to yesterday when Son#2’s knee turned to hamburger meat. Off we went to Publix to buy more band aids. Son#3 has not outgrown them. We now own Fairly Odd Parent band aids as well as some sort of patriotic red white and blue with stripes, that he thought were too cool. His older brothers, however… things have changed.

We are now into size because… they are boys… and at this early age they have come to learn that bigger.is.better. I have band aids in this house now that will cover an entire knee. Or better yet, I now have a box that contains some that would probably cover the entire side of your face.

And we’ve very much into how they operate. The big question is “Mom… will these stick to my boo boo?” as in, will the pus dry causing the band aid to adhere? We’re all about nothing sticking. Then there are these really cool silver ones Son#1 had to have because they had ‘natural anti-bacterial’ ointment or something like that on them. So we have a pack of those too.

We have another pack that has something for every size cut or scrape. Round, square, rectangular… we’re missing only star or triangle.

How many does that make? Something like 6 boxes? Yup. And Thank God we bought them all because as of this afternoon there is not a major joint on Son#2 that is not covered in a nasty pusy bloody scrape. His knees, his elbows, all four. He’s a mess. He loves gimping around the house. He loves his cool flesh colored, but BIG band aids… until the scabs form of course. Scabs beat out band aids any day.