This Month's Story

I cut my finger earlier this year.

It wasn’t a very deep cut, really just a small slice, but it was in a bad spot and I put a  Band-Aid on it to protect it. It was a nuisance pulling the little red string with my teeth and then trying to remove the plastic protecting strips from the Band-Aid itself without getting blood all over everything, but I got it done.

Last year I got a similarly small cut on my leg and put a Band-Aid on it also. I don’t recall any cuts or similar abrasions the year before that, i.e., in ‘99. But given things being what they are, there may well have been some occasion to use a Band-Aid in that year as well.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because this morning I went into the drawers below the master bedroom sink to get some soap for the shower and found that we had six boxes of Band-Aids.

Think about that: six boxes of Band-Aids!

I’ll get back to the soap in a moment, but first let’s talk about those six boxes of Band-Aids. In each of five of these boxes there are 40 Band-Aids, the remaining box (actually it was a tin) was a super size and that box held 80 Band-Aids. In the drawer immediately below there were a number of lose Band-Aids from some long forgotten box and several rolls of tape, I suppose to make Band-Aids in case we ran out.

Intrigued at what I was finding, I decided to investigate the other two bathrooms in the house and check their medicine cabinets. In each of these I found a box of Band-Aids and when I went to the small cabinet in the kitchen a large 80 Band-Aid tin greeted me. Also, I found a Band-Aid dispenser! Small, it could be kept in one’s pocket or purse and whipped out for that moment of extreme emergency, like a tiny resuscitator or defibrillator.

Where could all of these have come from and more importantly, why? I can only think that these disseminations have been made for use in some horrific emergency so that one would not have to go but a few feet and could apply Band-Aid after Band-Aid on some gaping wound before fainting (although how one would pull all of those little red strings and remove the plastic wrapping eludes me).

I will admit that I do know the logic behind all of this but it is one not easily explained. At least not easily explained to someone who isn’t married.

Now please don’t get me wrong. This is not some sexist harangue on the superiority of men in buying Band-Aids than women. The point that I am trying to address here is that women’s priorities are often directed in different directions than men. Superficially, like men and women’s hair styles and shoe sizes, these may seem at times to resemble each other, but their not the same. 

I think to better explain this, I had better give one or to more examples in addition to boxes of Band-Aids.

In the same drawers in the master bedroom there were twelve bars of soap. I checked and found that there are equal amounts of bars of soup in the other bathrooms. All waiting, I suppose, for some terrible dirty word orgy on the part of either Stella or I in which bar after bar of soap will be needed in the cleansing frenzy that would follow.

Then there are the paper towels.

Now, paper towels by their nature are space consuming. A paper towel roll is a big piece of merchandise, something that no matter how science advances, will never be sold in thimble-sized units that need only the addition of water to bring to full operational use.

So, paper towels are bulky and take up closet space, especially when they are in those six pack plastic sacks. But don’t worry; we have a place in our house for these, too. There is in the back toward the garage, a closet that contains little else but paper towels. Neatly stacked, each plastic six-pack packaged rests on top of another six-pack. On the shelf right above all these are stored dust pans (There are not too many of these; I believe, perhaps four, maybe five).

There are times when I walk back there and open the door and look at the piles of towels neatly arranged like the storage crates in the ending of the movie, “Raiders of the Lost Arc.” Somehow, I feel that if there is another biblical deluge, we will be ready.

I remembered the closet the other day when I saw Stella, on returning from shopping, unload a large bag of paper towels from the car. Helping her bring the packages inside, I asked her as casually as I could, why she had bought more paper towels. Putting the broccoli in the refrigerator she said something over her shoulder that contained the words, “they were on sale.”

There you have it, the magic reasoning words in this parallel universe logic: “On Sale.”

Here is where the unhappily married man and the happily married man part company with me, thank goodness, walking among the latter. You see, I am sure that we will use all of these towels some day. I am equally as sure we use all of those bars of soap one day.

I have the proof in front of me, turning and handing me the packages of towels to take back to the closet. It is there in the smile on Stella’s face. She’s happy and that’s what really is what was bought when she bought the towels.

I took the towels and, after placing them in the closet, asked what was for lunch.