Logo no-go

Last week I was slicing a perfectly ripe avocado with a chef's knife and carelessly sliced my finger as well, a deep cut right next to the cuticle that bled like a guacamofo.  Charlie, who had been patiently standing by in his tower awaiting his turn with the knife, was concerned.  He followed me upstairs to help me tend my injury.

Cold water first, then soap and a good rinse.  A glaze of Neosporin, and then an adhesive bandage.  He watched it all with a grave expression.  But his biggest concern, as it turned out, was not the blood or the pain.  No, he had only one question: "What picture will your Band-Aid have on it?"

This is only relevant because it's the story I told the nurse on Friday as she was unwrapping a bandage after my blood draw.  She laughed and told me that at her house, when she needs a Band-Aid, her only choices are SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer.  We agreed that it hardly seemed fair that adults have so few options.  Plain, we declared, was boring.  And while sushi and bacon are a very good start, where are the vodka and Cheez-Its? 

It wasn't until I made to pick up my handbag that I saw I had not, after all, been given a plain Caucasian-flesh-colored bandage.  No, it was fancy all right.  But no ninjas or Jesus for me.  The crook of my elbow, the tiny scarred spot that has been the site of hundreds of needle sticks, had become prime advertising space:

Now, I'm as anti-genital-warts as the next girl, especially since I was diagnosed with HPV in college.  It was devastating, and it brought to a grinding halt — or more accurately a grindless halt — my joyful spree as...oh, let's just say that in those days I was what you might call a friendly gal.  The diagnosis, treatment, and subsequent flurry of frequent Pap smears ushered in an era of frigid celibacy so absolute that it took two years for my loins to return to serving temperature.  As it turned out, I suffered no lasting physical damage, not from that STD, anyway, and no recurrence whatsoever.  But the emotional repercussions were huge.  So I'm all for the promiscuous application of a vaccine for human papillomavirus.  But I'd rather say so with my mouth instead of my arm.

Years ago I was deeply impressed by what I found in my primary care doctor's office.  It was papered with the usual informative posters: a colorful map of the human digestive tract, an architectural rendering of the fucked-up tangle of rubber bands that is the human ankle, a lurid touch-'n'-feel guide to communicable diseases of the skin and whatnot.  But where there would usually be a big logo in the corner — "This scratch 'n' sniff poster brought to you by the makers of Monistat" — my doctor had conscientiously placed a plain white shipping label so that no manufacturer would benefit.  "It's good information," she explained when I thanked her.  "I just don't want anyone to try to shill to my patients."

Since then I've been perpetrating my own one-woman campaign of small-scale sabotage.  When I'm in a doctor's office and I see a logo that's easily obscured, I do my best, my non-vandalizing best, to hide it.  This might mean putting a Post-It note over the logo on a poster.  It might mean turning the promotional stirrup covers inside out so that they no longer advertise an estrogen supplement but instead present a fleecy haven for a nervous woman's heels.  It might mean, as it did on Friday, petulantly presenting myself to the office manager, presenting my elbow crook with a j'accuse-y flourish, and bleating, "I'm an advertisement!  I don't want to be an advertisement!"

The office manager only laughed kind of nervously, as if she thought I was joking.  I wasn't.  The nurse thought to comfort me by assuring me that I'd only have to wear it for a few minutes — alas, not true, since my daily dose of Lovenox makes me bleed for much longer than the average pissy human billboard.  I wore that fucker for hours.

I'm still irritated today.  Screw the medico-adverto-adhesive-bandagerial complex.  Next time I'm taking my own.