"Sticking Plasters" (or: The Unsolicited Wisdom of a Bandage Enthusiast)
One, who has been patching up scratches, broken hearts and hurt egos for years, always carries band-aids in her bag. Today, without anyone asking me, I'm going to share some accumulated wisdom from my band-aid and advice workshop.
I’m not a nurse, but I’ve seen it all. My advice comes from experience, not a degree. (I’ve made every possible mistake—and I’m probably forgetting some.)
The first time I tried to tend to someone else’s wound—a scrape on my cousin’s knee after he fell off the swing—I used duct tape because it
was the only thing in the drawer. My aunt yelled from the kitchen: "María, that’s for painting furniture, not children!" I learned that you don’t need to know much, but you do need to tell the difference between white glue and iodine.
Plasters are just the beginning; behind them lie stories, bruises, and the occasional scare. Once, a neighbor knocked on my door with a cut on her finger and confessed she got it while chopping almonds for her mother-in-law’s cake—"the same woman who said I couldn’t cook." The plaster was quick; what took longer was listening to how that cut was really a silent scream against her mother-in-law’s judgments.
I don’t judge how you got hurt. It doesn’t matter if it was clumsiness, bravery, or pure carelessness.
A friend showed up with a swollen ankle after jumping a fence to impress a girl. "Did it work?" I asked while icing it. "No, but now I have an excuse to limp dramatically when I visit her." Moral of the story: even stumbles have their uses.
Supermarket ice cream cakes have an underrated therapeutic power.
It was Tuesday afternoon, and my friend Lola arrived at my place with puffy eyes and a supermarket ice cream cake. "My boyfriend and I broke up," she said, collapsing onto the sofa like a sack of potatoes. Me, ever the believer that words can mend almost anything, leapt to her rescue:
"Well, at least he didn’t leave you at the altar," I blurted, sure it was the kind of perspective-shifting remark she needed.
Lola stared at me as if I’d just spat in her face. "My dad left my mom on their wedding day," she said quietly. "He got into a taxi and said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’"
The silence that followed was so thick you could’ve cut it with the knife I brought from the kitchen to eat the cake. It was chocolate ice cream cake, and we ate it together to forget my comment. Since then, when someone shows up heartbroken, I ask first: "Do you want to talk, or should we skip straight to the ice cream?" And I never mention altars.
The best cures take time. There are no shortcuts to a properly healed wound.
As a kid, I’d pick at my scabs out of impatience. My mother warned me: "If you don’t let it heal, it’ll leave a mark." Now my heart looks like a map of lost battles. I apply the same rule to advice: rushing is the enemy of solutions.
Not everything can be fixed with a "heal, little frog’s bottom" chant. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it stings.
When
my cousin had her tonsils out, I told her ice cream would fix
everything. On day two, she glared at me with teary, hoarse defiance: "You lied. It still hurts." I hugged her (and gave her more ice cream). I learned not to sell magic fixes, but to offer companionship through the process.
Sometimes, the sharpest pain isn’t the wound.
A
coworker came to my desk asking for a plaster for her finger. As I
applied it, she burst into tears because her cat had died that morning. I
didn’t know what to say, so I handed her a tissue and told her how mine
once ran off with a neighborhood tabby and only came back for food. She
laughed through her tears. Sometimes, the plaster is just an excuse.
Epilogue:
We’ve
all been plaster-stickers at some point (and we’ve all given
well-meaning bad advice). What matters isn’t always being right, but
learning when to reach for a plaster, ice cream, or just silence—and the
other person’s hand.
(And yes, sometimes you have to forgive yourself for using duct tape.)
—mvf
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