Like Getting a Band-aid out of a Blanket

Froggy, next to can of soda to show actual size

Today my son (Ari, in case you forgot his name) dropped Froggy in the toilet.  I know, I know.  You are already riveted.  You are wondering frantically, "Who is Froggy, and how did this happen??!?"  I am certain that you've heard nothing all week that rivals the suspense and fascinatingness of this event.  So, Froggy is this cute little dude, sort of a found object.  We had Ari's third birthday at the park, a park we don't usually go to.  At some point, Ari found Froggy on the floor near a trash can.  Some other child had lost him, and probably drooled on him.  He was all dirty.  Gross, right?  I thought so.  But Ari insisted on bringing Froggy home, and I put him in the laundry, and he came out much cleaner.

Froggy's moved in with us.  Ari loves him more than any other stuffed animal.  Once, Ari lost Froggy for a time (perhaps three days), and every morning when he woke up his first words were, "Froggy? Did you find Froggy?"  Then Froggy appeared, to our great relief, on the living room floor.  It was a scene out of a romance novel.  Ari saw Froggy on the floor, galloped across and scooped him up, held Froggy close to his face crooning softly, "Froggy!  Froggy!"

As usual, this has very little to do with the rest of my post, except that dropping Froggy into the toilet was distressing for Ari, and the only other thing that has been as distressing as this was the Band-aid in the blanket incident which happened a few days ago.  Here I know you are on the edge of your seat.  Ari is obsessed with several things.  There is a little girl named Leila, who wears sun dresses like a seven year old and other normal adult-like clothes.  There is Froggy.  There is his tutu.  Lastly, there are Band-aids.

The other day I was foolish.  As a parent, I am only human.  I try desperately to think ahead to every possible catastrophe, and I am smart.  Almost never do I allow unpleasantness to touch my darling child.  However, I failed the other day.  I allowed my son to wear a Band-aid to bed.  I thought, "What could be the harm?"  I thought, "He is three, surely he will not attempt to pull it off and eat it.  He hardly ever eats anything that doesn't have sugar in it."  I thought, "Oh, I want to let him sleep with the Band-aid!  It will make him so happy!!"  Foolishness!  He did not choke to death while attempting to eat the Band-aid.  No, something far worse happened.  The Band-aid got stuck to his blanket.  

Blanket with Band-aid

For days I have been trying to pick it off.  I finished grad school last week and am currently unemployed, so I have a lot of time.  But no amount of picking did anything.  Finally it occurred to me that I needed to use these fine tipped scissors we have, so I went looking for them.  B, who is in New York for the entire month of May (Have you ever heard of anything so awful?), evidently took them with her.  So I had to wait until she got home for the weekend.  (Okay, so she comes home weekends, but I am still suffering here without her.)

The scissors

This evening I had my moment, and I was alone with the blanket and the scissors.  I had envisioned the scissors neatly removing the Band-aid from the blanket a thousand times.  To have them and the blanket and good lighting was almost more happiness than my OCD self could take.  Then I started cutting.  What a disaster!  After fifteen minutes, I had made no progress.  The nap of the blanket was too short to cut, and the threads were too many, and the f-ing Band-aid was not coming off!  I struggled and suffered and almost wept.  I cried to B (who knew to come and support me, but not too closely because she would have blocked my light), "Help!  Help!"  Eventually, I muttered to her, "I can't sit here and keep trying to cut this Band-aid out of this blanket.  I don't even know if I am alive anymore!"  I admitted defeat, and I sat with my head in my hands, considering buying a new blanket.  (They're only $14.99 at Target.)  But I am unemployed, and besides that, the blanket is perfectly good.  I considered--and this was really hard--allowing the Band-aid to remain on the blanket.  What would Ari think?  Would he be okay with that?  Would I?  Of course not.

I got back to it, and I eventually succeeded.  I ate lots of candy, and that helped.  But mainly what helped was accepting that I could not rest until I got it out.  Whenever writers have characters who "can not rest" until something is accomplished, I know exactly what they mean.  Not literally, of course, because I slept fine for days with the Band-aid stuck to the blanket, but I am with the idea in spirit.  Is this OCD?  Is this why Ari doesn't like art?  Because it's messy, and because OCD is genetic?  Will he notice the Band-aid is gone?  Yes.  Will he think his mommy is crazy?  No.  What is normal, and what is not?  And after my fight with the Band-aid, am I even alive anymore?

The Carnage: bits of Band-aid, candy wrappers, scissors