Let’s say you finally hoisted yourself off your butt and got a Covid shot, and don’t want your Republican friends to know, but that bandaid on your upper arm is a dead-giveaway.
Or perhaps one of life’s other little disasters overtook you (or a whole bunch of them, see photo below; click on image to enlarge, to read the fine print). Whatever the reason it’s there, you wish to rid yourself of that bandaid, but dread the moment. So you came here for sage advice.
You’re in the right place, sister.
Advice #1: Look, you gotta do it sooner or later, so you may as well deal with it.
Advice #2: There’s two schools of thought on this: (A) slow peel, and (B) fast rip. The only thing these methods have in common is the bandaid will no longer be attached to you afterward.
Advice #3: This is going to hurt, so deal with that.
A third category, often called “painless,” includes a smorgasbord of techniques, hacks, and aids ranging from blow dryers to mineral oil to commercially available products. I can’t vouch for whether they work, but in any case I’m going to skip them, because they’re for sissies and cowards.
There’s also a technique you might call “distraction.” An older brother taught me this one. (If you don’t have an older brother, borrow one from a friend.) He promised I wouldn’t feel the bandaid being pulled off. He kept his word. He punched me so hard on my arm I didn’t feel the bandaid come off. I was about 8 or 9 years old when I learned this one — in other words, still trusting and gullible.
Many bandaids will come off if you soak in the bathtub long enough. Usually, though, they’ll still be stuck to some hairs and you’ll have to finish the job.
After decades of empirical research, i.e. countless experiments, I’ve come to prefer the fast rip method. The theoretical framework is that while the volume of pain is equal, the intensity is asymmetrical, and bearability is the inverse square of duration, or something like that. By way of illustration, it’s probably better to be instantly vaporized in a million-degree fireball than to slowly burn at much lower temperature in a house fire.
Your preference may be different — to each his own. The only way to find out is through empirical research, trying both methods a number of times, until you settle on the one that works best for you.
