Friday, October 29, 2010

Go Fix Me A Turkey Pot Pie

I happened to glance at the back of a box of Band-Aids while I was brushing my teeth this morning and this is what I saw:

Now, I know this is just a few paragraphs that are supposed to give an old-timey feel-good summary on the origin of this company's flagship product. Or maybe it's just to fill otherwise blank space on the back of the box. Now that I think about it, I am probably one of the few people outside of the individuals responsible for the manufacture of the box itself that have actually read this little story.

Does anyone else feel like there are large chunks of the narrative that are not being told? I mean, really... That poor woman, toiling away while “suffering (???) from minor cuts and burns”? Are you trying to tell me that, before this invention, people just walked around with bleeding, seeping wounds and made no attempt to do anything about it? I realize medical knowledge in 1920 was only moderately more advanced than leech-craft but c'mon... nothing? NOTHING?!

No. Something is missing from this story. But what? Even one more sentence would tie it all together, but where should it go? Let's see if we can fill in some of the gaps. Maybe one or more of the following patches can help us Sherlock Holmes our way into a cogent plotline. Just pick one and shoehorn it into the story where you think it makes the most sense.
  1. … gingerly stepped over the carcass of a fearsome badger that had obviously been choked to death by a woman's apron strings after an hours-long battle in the kitchen, when he noticed his wife suffering from minor cuts and burns...
  2. “Yes, I know I look a fright, Mable. I am so clumsy sometimes. I mean, just yesterday I repeatedly tripped and fell into my husband's fountain-pen-nib-and-lit-cigar-butt collection. That's the noise you must have heard last ni... oh my God he's home early go go go go...”
  3. … because cotton-buyers in the early twentieth century always kept a roll of surgical tape on them at all times, being the only ones outside of doctors and clergy deemed trustworthy enough to handle the magic healing paper...
  4. After the wounds were healed she was repeatedly re-injured in a like manner to act as an experimental control to quantify how much longer the healing process was without the bandages...
  5. After roughly packing enough raw cotton into her wounds to prevent her from passing out from blood loss until after the roast was done...
Ok, fine. It's probably not any of these. But something is not right here... Do you have an idea? I'm all ears.

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