Stuck on Bandaids

My childhood was a time of wonder.

People wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

And I wondered why they called them "grapefruits" when they had nothing to do with grapes, I puzzled over why Heckle and Jeckle (left) had English accents, I wondered what good Algebra was ever going to do for me, and I wondered why people whose skin was not the same pasty pallid Caucasian hue as mine were supposed to do in case of a finger nick or knee laceration.

And I wondered if I could call myself "Nick Finger, Private Eye," and go around solving thefts, homicides, and kidnappings that had baffled the local gendarmerie for months. My gimmick would be that instead of wearing a mask, as the Lone Ranger did, I would have a Band-Aid on a different finger for every case. In this way, I would avoid leaving a complete set of fingerprints at the scene of local puzzlers.

But back to Band-Aids. It never seemed fair to have a Black person wear a "flesh" colored bandage.  The whole point of equality is not having any one person or group stand out like a sore thumb. 

Literally!

So Band-Aid is coming out with a line of various colors of bandages.

"We hear you. We see you. We’re listening to you," Band-Aid said on Instagram.
"We stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, collaborators and community in the fight against racism, violence and injustice. We are committed to taking actions to create tangible change for the Black community."

Beside the Basic Pasty Caucasian, the range of colors includes "light, medium and deep shares of Brown and Black skin tone that embrace the beauty of diverse skin."

"We are dedicated to inclusivity and providing the best healing solutions, better representing you," Band-Aid says. "We promise that this is just the first among many steps together in the fight against systemic racism. We can, we must, and we will do better."

Before 1921, when you cut yourself shaving or got burned by a hot coal or got a blister from playing "Alabama Jubilee" on the guitar like Jerry Reed, only more slowly, you had to run around and find gauze and some sort of ointment and adhesive tape, which could take hours. A lot of people just "Let it bleed, I don't care."  But that's when Band-Aid came to be, and the good folks who brought those sticky little thangs to our medicine chest only made one mistake, and that was the extremely limited color selection.

And it only took 99 years.