There are three things that Brodericks will always have in their first aid kit: superglue, vaporub, and a box of adhesive bandages. Of course, the super glue is probably glued shut, the vaporub only has a tiny glob in the lid, and the box of adhesive bandages only has a wrapper of a bandage left. For my most recent need to dip into my first aid kit, it seemed that this was the case.
It all started off with me chewing my nails. My brother and I have always chewed our nails: while Cameron would chew his entire finger to nubbins, I would be more precise and focus mostly on hangnails. And as much as my mother would try to get us to stop, nothing could stop us from utter mastication of our fingers. Recently, I was biting at my right pinky nail and nearly pulled half of my nail out of the nail bed. Yeah it hurt, but I just ignored it and went on to biting my other fingers. I ignored the finger for a few days, and then the infection set in. My first thought to ease my infection was hydrogen peroxide, but recently, a roommate (guess who) decided to throw it away. So my second option for sterilization was vaporub.
Vaporub has been the cure-all in my family since the dawn of time. If I ever had a cold, my mother would slather me up like a greased pig and send me to bed. Only once I visited my Aunt Shelly in New Zealand was I let in on its ability to cure any disease. She told us how if you have a sore throat, swallow a glob, it’ll make you feel better by the morning. Chapped lips? Put it all over your lips and they’ll be kissable in an hour. Dry nose? Swab some vaporub in your nostrils… that’ll clear everything up. So obviously I thought, well maybe vaporub can sterilize my finger.
I grabbed the vaporub and of course, there was a lone glob in the lid (probably because when my apartment smells, I choose to slather up with vaporub before I go to bed so that I can’t smell the dishes from my bedroom [this occurs more than I would like to admit]). I smeared the glob all over my finger, which then became the most painful experience of my life. Certain I was going to have to amputate my hand, I rolled around the apartment floor in agony. After an hour, the pain went away, and I knew there would be no way that any bacteria could still be alive in my wound. Life was good. Then it wasn’t.
I went to go sell my plasma at the plasma center, and of course, I bit the scab off my fingernail. I went into the screening booth and to make sure I only donate at that certain plasma center, they paint my right pinky nail with fluorescent paint. The woman who administered the paint did so with great passion, pushing the dye into my nail bed, which then made me realize that vaporub was nothing compared to fluorescent dye. I looked at my finger under the black light and then theorized that the dye would seep into my bloodstream, and that I would then be able to glow under a black light. I imagined how I could utilize my new found power for good… and then for evil. The woman in the booth felt bad and gave me a bandaid to cover up the finger.
As stupid as it sounds, receiving a bandaid for my finger seemed like sweet rebellion to me. Growing up, we were not allowed to have band aids unless we were going to bleed on the carpet. I’m not sure if this was the rule because we were too poor to buy band aids (but it is definitely plausible) or if it was because if one child received a bandaid, the others would want one as well, and you cannot go giving band aids out willy-nilly. That’d be complete madness. But when I was allowed to use a bandaid, I would go wild the adhesive bandages, replacing them once an hour; hence, why our bandaid boxes were only filled with wrappers.
I let my finger rest for a while, and was hoping that it would clear up after a few days. But of course, whenever something happens to my right hand, my left hand has to get damaged as well. The wound on my left hand came from trying to close a door that had once been two paned, but after a tragic weed-whacking incident, was left with one pane and shards of glass all around the door frame. I went to close the door after going in the house and cut my thumb really deep. At first, I just tried to apply pressure to stop the gushing blood, but that did nothing and the blood kept flowing. So I decided to suck on my thumb to keep from bleeding on the floor. My sister, Kathryn, saw my panic and whipped out her trusty first aid kit from her purse to keep me from bleeding on the carpet. She knows the rules well. The bandaid worked at keeping me from dripping blood everywhere, but it soon was saturated with blood. No amount of band aids could get this thing to close, so I went for the superglue.
My grandmother taught me the great use of superglue in medicine. She swore that it was the same as getting stitches, and she would always threaten to glue any cuts I had. “Want some superglue on that?” No thanks, Grandma. No thanks. Grandma was actually rather inventive with superglue, and at one point managed to glue some assemblance of false teeth into her mouth. This was of course to avoid the dentist, whom, to my grandmother, was the same as Satan himself.
I found my superglue and went to work, applying a dab of glue to a hanging flap of skin and adhering it to the other side. I felt great, and also a bit disappointed that I didn’t decide to be a doctor, because what a repair I did! Then, I decided to grab a water bottle from my room, which the pressure of having something in my hand pushed a smidge of superglue into my flesh. I may have been delirious, but I could have sworn I saw steam leaking from my flesh. And then I knew I was going to die, if not from the burning hot intensity resonating from my hand, then from chemical exposure giving me cancer.
I used all three, first aid tricks that the Brodericks possess in the period of a week, and each time I nearly died. Why we swear by vaporub, superglue, and no band aids, I couldn’t tell you, but it is my opinion as a hypochondriac that we need to update our method of first aid. To what will we change, I have no clue, but until we get new treatment, I will continue to carry vaporub and superglue in my first aid kit.
