Fast or Slow

Ethan, my 10-year-old, number-two son, asked me if I would help him to remove a large adhesive bandage from his gashed knee so he could go to the pool. This injury he acquired when he fell off his skateboard at Josh Bemis' house yesterday.

Ethan came over to where I was sitting and, putting his foot on an adjacent chair, showed me the large, business-card-sized bandage. I asked him how he hurt himself, and he described how he wiped out on the skateboard. "Did you cry?" I asked, careful not to make it sound like I would be disappointed if he had.

"No," he said, with typical "I'm-almost-eleven" toughness.

"Was there much blood?" I further queried.

"Not at first," he answered, "but after."

I felt the edges of the bandage for place to get a good grip and said to him, "We can do this one of two ways: We can do it fast, which will hurt, but the pain will be quick and we'll get it over with in a hurry. Or we can do it slow, which will also hurt, but it will probably hurt longer."

Ethan thought for just a second, and with no further hesitation said, "Fast."

Gripping a frayed and slightly lifted corner of the bandage, I gave it a gentle tug, making sure my fingers wouldn't slip and turn the quick-painful one-step process into a not-so-quick, even more painful, two- or three-step process. Satisfied with my grip, I took a breath and yanked hard. It came off in one blurred motion. Not yet noticing what sort of injury lay behind the bandage, I looked immediately to Ethan's face.

He hadn't even flinched. He didn't make a sound.

"You okay?" I asked him.

"It wasn't so bad," he said. I was proud of him, but found it difficult to find a way to tell him without making him think that I would be any less proud of him had he flinched or whimpered at the pain. So I said, "I'm glad you're not a big sissy, because it would be almost impossible to love you if you were."

No, I didn't really say that. I merely handed him the used bandage so he could toss it into the trash before trotting off to the pool.