soopastryheart

Though I read plenty of articles, essays, and short stories online, I have yet to read a digital copy of a book. I’m not against digital readers as I used to be, but I still prefer the physical texture of printed paper beneath my fingertips. The problem though, is that my attention span is just a sliver of what it used to be, so finishing an entire book seems like an arduous endeavor.

But back during the days when I would practically inhale books, I developed an ever-so-common habit of folding a teensy corner of the page to mark where I had left off. This was fine when I could finish a book within a sitting or two, therefore limiting the amount of corners which would be bent. Fast forward to now, where that creased triangle is present on every other page, leaving the book filled with unsightly literary razor burn. And then guilt crept up on me; those tiny page nicks started to feel invasive and oddly enough, disrespectful.

So I started using bookmarks, anything flat that was within arm’s reach to mark my spots. One time it was a stick of gum, which was fine until I forgot about the book for almost a year. I returned to find that the gum had secreted its sugary juices from the compression and had fused itself onto the pages. Occasionally it was a credit card, which also worked fine until it buried itself into the book, rendering it invisible. This inevitably led me to freak out at the loss of the credit card, so I turned the whole god damn place over to try to find it. There was never a designated bookmark, so everything I used was impromptu; it just had to be conveniently flat and require just milliseconds to grab and use. Some markers definitely worked better than others, but over the years, one that became the most popular were band-aids.

I carry a band-aid with me at all times, a habit I adopted from my mom. I have a few tucked away in my wallet, several thrown around in my purse, some stashed in the crevices of the car, most suitcases, and usually the pockets of jackets and coats. I always had a band-aid within reach, so naturally, when I looked for a bookmark, it was there, ready to go. And they were perfect: plentiful, flat, and easily replaceable. And they were individually wrapped, so unless you observed really closely, no one was the wiser. Or so I thought.

For awhile, there was a book I carried in my purse because I was determined to finish it in the milli-moments of the day when I could squeeze in a few paragraphs/pages. The book would get tossed around in my bag, and the band-aid would fall out and get crinkled. It suffered through weeks of thrashings until the wrapper’s integrity disintegrated and it slithered off like a reptile shedding. When that finally happened, I disposed of the wrapper and continued to use the now-exposed-but-still-unused band-aid, promising myself to replace it with a protected one when I got the chance.

Except I always forgot, and this tortuous spin cycle in my bag continued. Unfortunately, the band-aid can only take so much abuse before the protective flaps that shield the sticky portions start to yield, collecting whatever random debris it comes across: granola bar crumbs, random strands of hair, a shitload of questionable dust and dirt. Within a week, this band-aid had become a magnet to the most disgusting particles found in my purse.

Then one day, during a meeting with my then-mentor, a prominent department head at the children’s hospital (someone who I truly respected and admired, and desperately wanted an endorsement from), I was searching for my notebook when I pulled out the book instead. I set it down on my lap for a brief second before I noticed the band-aid drooping down from the side, grosser than ever before, greyed at the edges from the collection of dirt balls and hairs of at least three different shades. I shoved the book as quickly as I could back into the bag, but the damage was done. The way it was dangling didn’t indicate its purpose as a page marker, but rather an unsavory tag-along, like when you step on gum on the street.

The look on my mentor’s face was a combination of discomfort and repulsion, similar to the reaction you’d have if you caught the guy sitting next to you on the bus with his dick out. But like, if that dick had some some crushed cornflakes and lint stuck on it. I mean, this thing looked like it came off the toe of someone who had been walking barefoot through New York’s subway system for a week. He didn’t know the story of the band-aid. He didn’t know that it was utilized for anything other than what it’s actually for. For all he knew, it was used to cover some oozy, pus-bubbling scab, collecting bacteria and blood and sweat. And I had kept this rancid bandage for who knows how long, for who knows what reason. And maybe I had used the band-aid, but what if, WHAT IF, it was someone else’s contaminated dressing that I was collecting?! In that split second, I saw him questioning my entire existence, perhaps asking himself how and why I was even there. I mean for god’s sake, I was someone who nannied for his kids. I was in his house on a semi-regular basis. And here I was, a putrid band-aid hanging out of a book.

To salvage the situation, I think I managed to mutter something along the lines of “…not used…book marker…” but it was unclear if he understood what I was trying to say or not. He just continued the conversation as if it hadn’t been revealed that I was some freak that collected used band-aids in her purse, or someone so uncouth that she failed to realize that there was something so repugnant stuck to her belongings. That day, I went home and immediately replaced the band-aid with a new one, and for the following week, I tried my hardest to casually make the new wrapped band-aid visible, so he could surmise what the previous one was also used for. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never made the connection.

The important thing though, was that this incident didn’t have any negative impact on our relationship. He had already known me as an excessively-prepared, eager-to-please pre-med student. I had already proven my capabilities and potential, and his kids were giving me glowing reviews (in retrospect though, toddlers drop “I love yous” more than sippy cups). And if he had looked past the unsightly band-aid, he would have seen that I was reading Pushkin (hey man, I was at the peak of my pretentious obsession of Russian lit), and not like, Nicholas Sparks. Though he only knew me on a very surface level, he had already made a judgement on who I was. I was the sum of my parts (or at least, what he had seen so far), and this weird/nasty incident was just a tiny blip. Thankfully, he didn’t discount what he had already known about me and marginalized me as “the girl with a used band-aid fetish,” though it would have been awfully easy to do so. In the end, he provided me with a spectacular recommendation and I continued as a nanny for his kids. 

The gnarly band-aid incident happened nearly 9 years ago. And I thought that by sharing this story now, I’d alleviate the level of cringe-worthiness I experienced, but I can’t say with any certainty that it’s done much at all. And if there’s a lesson to be learned here, I’m not quite sure what that is. Perhaps it’s that situations are never as bad as you think they are, or that with time, you can convince yourself that situations are never as bad as you think they are.

Either way, I still use them as bookmarks, so if you see me somewhere and I have what appears to be a used band-aid hanging off a book, you’ll know why.

*Title lyric from “The Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats