What’s New In Boo Boos?

When I hear or read people waxing lyrical about a certain decade or century being ‘a simpler time’ a part of me writes them off as daft.

Have they never watched a period drama and wondered why they’re all drinking tea? It’s because you couldn’t find a good barista outside of Italy.

At some point in my day I am guaranteed to think how grateful and lucky I am to be born in this era, rather than any of those previous. And I mean from the moment I pull back my lovely soft doona and jump out of my uninfested bed to make a decent cup of Joe using my pod machine. From the second I turn on the telly-sitter so I can enjoy some quality time with my coffee. If the coffee doesn’t sort out my thumping headache I take a sinus tablet. Thank goodness for modern medicine, I’ll think to myself as I rub my temple as the pain subsides. Then I’ll throw a load in the dryer because my app says it’s raining outside, meaning I’ll have to drink an ice cold beer while I watch some bloke whipper-snipper my garden edges another day.

And I haven’t even got to the bit where someone bakes and boxes me a couple dozen party pies which I can leave in the freezer for months until some night when I’m so exhausted from Facebooking working I can’t be stuffed making dinner from scratch. Where scratch is boiling a packet of pasta and opening a jar of pasta sauce.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive – we should all take the time to notice it and be ever so bloody thankful. I do. But even then, I take so much for granted.

Like bandages.

The tiniest of scrapes or cuts will send any child of mine into a banshee-like state. Usually, this will mean I have to stop Facebooking working and go to the medicine cabinet to find something to fix it. And by fixing it I of course mean nothing more than covering it up so they can’t see the blood. I confess I find it annoying to have to break my train of thought and do this, but have you ever stopped to wonder what parents did before self adhesive bandages became a thing?

Or when they became a thing?

Rather wonderfully, the invention of bandages can be traced back to a wonderfully clumsy lady named Josephine. She was so adept at being inept in the kitchen, her husband started to make her self-adhesive bandages she could apply to her fingers herself, presumably so he didn’t have to take his face out of a book (see what I did there) to stop her bleeding all over his dinner.

The first commercially available bandages able to be self-administered went on sale in 1920 and didn’t sell well – probably because they were 3″ wide and 18″ long. I guess, as super sizing meals wasn’t invented until 1968, there weren’t any fingers big enough to warrant them.

Since then there’s been a number of wonderful advancements in bandage smarts, although again I doubt any of us give it much thought.

It took 18 years until they became completely sterile, and a further 13 before plastic strips were introduced. But the best advancement, as any parent will attest, happened in 1956 when some clever sod thought to decorate them with pictures. I haven’t looked it up, but I think we can all assume that’s the bloke who won the Nobel Prize that year. Well deserved too, I say.

And the latest advancement in bandage tech which you probably didn’t notice? Finally they’re waterproof. That means, importantly for any parents, no longer having to dig them out of shower drains.

Our kids tested some standard bandage brands against the Nexcare Brand waterproof bandages, and ones they have specifically for blisters. Arriving at a local park, as well as covering their usual assortment of blood letting boo-boos we stuck a heap on their arms and legs then set them loose to run, climb, slide, swing, sweat and spin. Historically, a bandage will stick to a child just about as long as it takes me to sit back in front of my laptop and start Facebooking working again. I’m thrilled to say most of the twenty Nexcare Blister Waterproof Bandages, and only one of the ten normal bandages, were still attached not only two and a half hours later when we rounded them up to come home, but after showers that night and the next morning as well.

Oh, and there’s one other point I should like to make with the help of Miss12, especially as it was a big thing for her.

“Why’d you take your bandages off?” I asked her at the park. She’d balked at wearing the cartoon ones so I assumed she’d ripped them all off the moment my back was turned. When you’re twelve you have your reputation to think of.

“I didn’t,” she said, pointing to a spot on each of her knees which had a little skin coloured bubble.

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t see them.”

“I know, it’s great,” said Miss12. “Probably something you could mention in your post.”

So not only are they good at keeping water, dirt and germs out (there’s no gapping hole on either side of the gauze bit), they blend in nicely and are less noticeable than your standard bandage.

Which is all very nice and modern, and makes me very much think this, right here now, is the simpler time, because that all leads to less time reaching above the fridge to replace bandages and less time bending over to pick up those self-discarded bandages moments later, or maybe digging them out of plug holes that night.

So – and this is the real clincher for me – more time for good coffee.

Super.

And as a parent of four yet to be nearly-teens, I’m even happier to announce we don’t have to wait 26 years from the inception of these rather clever bandages until they think to put smilie faces on them, because they’ve already done it!

Genius.

And while you can’t win a Nobel Prize twice for the same thing, they did manage to take out the 2016 Product of the Year in the Wound Care category as voted by 14,422 household consumers in a survey by Nielsen Australia – like you didn’t know or assume that already.

It’s all just one more reason I get to claim it’s a wonderful time to be alive.

Nexcare Nana vs Car Wash. There’s a series of these things and she’s wonderful.

If you enjoyed this post please share, like or comment

Raising a family on little more than laughs.

Thank you to NexcareTM Blister Waterproof Bandages for sponsoring this post