The Princess and the Bandaid

Once upon a time there was a poor, but beautiful girl with two nasty stepsisters...and her name was Singorillo.

That's right. Singorillo, according to Crabtot. Now, I have not yet taken to reading Singorillo stories or similar stories involving princes, dwarves, and sundry poisoned fruit because I thought Crabtot was a bit too small to understand such fare or care about the girl with the glass slipper. Turns out she's not too young. At her daycare they read "that book about Singorillo," to put it in Tot's words, and Tot is now quite entranced by the story. Which is a little different from the version Mom expected.

"What happened to Singorillo?" I asked.

"She jumps and jumps and breaks her bed."

Ho-kay.

While this storyline doesn't sound enchanting to me, it nonetheless has proven to be so for the tot, who, on a recent trip to Albertson's, stopped dead in front of the bandaids. "Singorillo! I want that one! Singorillo!" And so we reach a milestone. No longer is the generic pink bandaid an item of exotic wonder. It is time to move on to bandaids printed with characters. Specifically, it is Singorillo we want and only Singorillo will do.

That is, if Mom can find her. Standing in the bandaid wing of the store, I could not see the object of desire. There are so many, many options for owees these days -- Strawberry Shortcake, that piece of cheese thing guy with blue legs (or sponge or whatever he is), Donald Duck, blah blah. But Tot keeps pointing furiously until I find the wasp-waisted Singers with her bouffant mane. An amazingly tiny illustration, but the tot spotted it instantly and jabbed her finger in her direction until Mom landed on the right box.

Confronted with the staggering price of the Singo bandaids -- like, $3.99 for five or something -- I then do this lame retroactive pretending-not-to-see-Singorillo, and I quickly move my finger across to some store-brand generica and start talking loudly about gummi bears hoping to shift the Tot focus, but we all know that this is about as likely to happen as the morphing of a golden coach into a pumpkin.

And thus we now possess very very expensive bandaids. Decorated with that girl who jumps and jumps and breaks her bed! Possessing such very very expensive bandaids is a problem for any cheapmommy whose kid is very very into playing with bandaids, a stage, it seems that tots go through. I ration them out for play, but Crabtot finds new strategies to extract them. Last week she had a terrible owee, or so she claimed and could not be pacified, nor would she reveal the location of said owee. I capitulated and handed out the third Singo of the day. Tot retreated into the bathroom and came out with a bandaid right across her eye. "It's all better now," she said, unable to blink.

Naturally after the (very tricky) removal of this bandaid, poor Tot had a true owee on her eye.

The other favored use of Singorillo bandaids is to place them across the upper lip during a cold, when that area is particularly sensitive. Even though she has closed off her nostrils, Tot says she feels much better with Singers stretched across her upper lip in this manner. It's quite something to behold the Crabtot when she styles herself this way. A little different from the classic princess vibe, but it's an arresting look.