I got banged up a lot when I was little. Not as bad as Willie, though, who sat next to me in class and ate his scabs. I was beginning to think he wrecked his bike on purpose just so he would have something to eat for lunch. And I would sit there and watch him. Fascinating, really. But, I, for one, managed to have different kinds of injuries, mainly from splinters.
I could sleep in bed and wake up with a splinter. Well, not really, but that’s how easy it was for me to get one. And my sadistic mom really didn’t have a problem with digging them out.
It was a medical procedure that my mom got used to. She would round up all the necessary players in this dysfunctional stage performance. She would retrieve her magnifying class that she used to tweeze stuff off of her face most evenings. She would get the tweezers that I never saw her alcohol before using, so I am sure there were stray chin hairs on them. Blah. That was phase one.
Then she had to find my finger. She would sit me down at the kitchen table, in front of her mobile laboratory, and would take my little bony appendage and I would grab it back. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
“Vickie, it really went in there this time. I can’t use the tweezers.”
Shit. I know what that meant.
It was needle time.
“Vickie, go downstairs and get my sewing basket. It is right beside the sewing machine.”
Five minutes later….
“Vickie?……………Vickie?…………..Vickie!!……Come on. Get up here.”
Shit.
My mom grabbed my finger…. Retreat…. Repeat….. Retreat….. Repeat. Finally, I relented because I wanted to get back outside to play and get another freaking splinter.
Back in the sixties, people would turn on the gas on their stoves and heat the needle to sterilize it. Great. A hot poker applied to my skin. But, my mom was progressive, because she was lazy, and just ran it under hot water. Afterall, how many germs could a needle in a sewing kit be carrying?
After digging to China and then grabbing it with her chin hair-laden tweezers, the little bugger was out of my finger.
Relief.
Um, not so fast. My mom wasn’t done yet.
“Vickie, go get the Metholaide.”
Shit………SHIT……..OH SHIT….Oh Dear God, not the red stuff!
In our house, we called the Mercurochrome, Metholaide. While doing research on its history for this blog post, I found that the correct spelling is “merthiolate” or “Mercurochrome” as it was advertised in the early sixties.
Mercurochrome 
Mercurochrome was a very thin liquid that was painted on the skin with an effect that followed us around: a reddish orange chemical laden with mercury. Hence, the name, MERCURochrome….. Great.
Every kid in the neighborhood during the sixties wore Mercurochrome. It was an antiseptic that was used for scrapes, scratches, and splinters. When applied, it burned worse than the alcohol that my mom would put on the wound BEFORE the Mercurochrome. I should back up, because there was a certain protocol for splinter removal:
Magnify, removal, peroxide, alcohol, and then Mercurochrome.
The peroxide would bubble, the alcohol would sting and the Mercurochrome would make me cry. Some of the older boys who were allowed to apply their own Mercurochrome had large areas painted. They wore it like a badge of courage. How macho. No, really. We thought they were macho.
“Oh, my gosh, did you see Randy’s leg? He wrecked his bike last night. It looks awful.”
The compound in this painful brown bottle held a derivative of mercury, a dye which gave it its lovely red color. From what I have read, mercury was very popular during the 1920′s, and was found in many other medications.
Mercurochrome was used without question until the FDA began looking into the pretty colored compound and decided that mercury was not really something that we should be putting in or own our bodies. I forgot to mention that we would also get a Q-tip and put some Mercurochrome on an ulcer on the inside of our mouth. Yes, baby boomers, we are full of mercury. I guess mercury doesn’t leave the body once it gets in there. It is stored in our fatty tissue. Fun times.
We are walking thermometers. Go ahead, as me what the temperature is.
Stuff still makes me wince
It wasn’t until the late eighties that the FDA re-classified the red wonder in a bottle as “untested,” meaning that if anyone wanted to sell it in this country had to go through hoops to get it on the market. So, that was the end of Mercurochrome.
As I sit here, in 2012, I’ve got to wonder why the mercury stored in my fatty tissue is not eating that fatty tissue?
I mean, work with me here.
Posted by 1domesticgoddess on January 27, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Yours is funny and relatable. I have a few memories of mercurochrome, but in our house, we called it ‘monkey blood’, because that sounds so much better. Geez, I didn’t know about the mercury either. Now I have something to blame my shoddy memory on, since I”m fairly certain i wasn’t dropped on my head as a small child.
Your story has me wondering what my children will remember about splinters. They’ve had some really nasty ones, some that required a giant needle and a shot of tequila, but I poured one for myself too, just to deal with all the noise! Although, i don’t have a sewing basket, I do have a sewing repair kind of kit with various sizes of needles. I may do that next time, just for the reaction!
Posted by kathryningrid on January 25, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Thankfully, and for unknown reasons, my parents didn’t use any of the really nasty “medications” on us, unless you count having a cut swabbed with rubbing alcohol. Grandpa, on the other hand, was old-school, and when I lived with my grandparents while working for a construction company and came home with a gashed palm one day, he promptly poured a gout of pure iodine on it while I made gritted-teeth faces and pretended I wasn’t screaming my head off internally. Hand healed, eventually, without stitches, so I guess it worked! Yikes. The things we do in the name of health!
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 25, 2012 at 7:27 pm
I know, right? My mom used to put butter on our minor burns..That is the worst thing you could do, but it was an old wives tale that she grew up with.
Posted by normalmomma on January 23, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Reblogged this on normalschmormaldotcom and commented:
I really like this blog…hope you will too
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 23, 2012 at 6:44 pm
How sweet! Thank you!
Posted by ღ Amy... on January 22, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Hellllo, I came by via Pat’s blog (back on my own). Hope you dont mind me snooping around a bit.
This blog brought back some memories. Oh my gosh I remember Mercurochrome!! As a matter of act, I believe we still may have a bottle under the bathroom sink. And your splinter removal…..Hahahaha, I went through the same thing with my dad. I can remember this heat creeping up my back right before he would start to use the needle. He heated it up too via the gas stove.
Great blog!!
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 22, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Amy, thank you! Ah, your dad used the heated needle. When I had kids, I just wiped it with alcohol. Not as dramatic and I probably won’t get a blog post written about it 20 years from now..lol Glad you stopped by!
Posted by Mish on January 21, 2012 at 9:11 pm
Oh. My. God. My mother used to paint every cut and scrape we got with that stuff and I was born in ’83! I had NO idea about the mercury. Unreal. Just glad I’m still alive and kicking! Lol.
Posted by thenotwriter on January 21, 2012 at 9:00 pm
I remember a little brown bottle of mercurochrome being in our medicine cabinet my entire childhood. I distinctly remember an incident in 1988 where I used it on a pretty dep cut. And Im pretty sure that bottle was still there when I moved out in 1991. Then again we also had a dentist that would give me a handful of pure mercury to play with as a child to keep me quiet while he was doing dental work on my parents.
And people wonder why I turned out the way I did.
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 21, 2012 at 9:34 pm
omg. He gave you mercury to play with? I used to work for a dentist and was around mercury all of the time. I’m sure I’m a mess..lol
Posted by thenotwriter on January 21, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Yes. A nice big shiny bead of mercury about the size of a silver dollar. I would sit on the floor in the little room where they made the fillings and slide it around on the floor or let it dribble back and forth from one hand to the other or break it up into smaller pieces. I thought it was the most fascinating thing in the world, the way it seemed liquid and solid at the same time. It would keep me busy so he could work on my parents teeth without me getting bored. This would have been in the early 80′s. I guess they didnt know it was dangerous to handle it back then. Either that or my parents and my dentist were plotting to kill me via mercury poisoning.
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 22, 2012 at 6:29 am
I’m thinking that your dentist’s elevator didn’t go to the top floor. OMG. I worked as a dental assistant from 1980-1984 and I my dentist boss told me not to touch it, that it will enter your skin and bad things will happen..lol But, then we mixed an amalgam of mercury to put in the fillings. Go figure..lol
Posted by Eric L on January 21, 2012 at 6:04 pm
This is a good one Vickie. Extremely entertaining yet very informative — as usual. I had no idea about the Mercury thing. Jeezus, it’s a wonder any of us are still alive!
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 21, 2012 at 7:45 pm
I know, right? And we used to put it in our mouth when we had ulcers…Dear God…lol
Posted by mrtinney on January 21, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Very nice. Makes me think of those glory days when a bike and a knee scab were all we needed… nobody ever gets a splinter or scrape from a frickin’ X-box! My kids have no idea what they are missing.
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 21, 2012 at 3:21 pm
I know, right? I don’t even see scabs on kids anymore. Well, not that I look for scabs, but you know…
Posted by Elyse on January 21, 2012 at 11:58 am
Don’t worry. It’s still eating those splinters.
Besides, we all have to die from something. I’ve just never heard of anyone dying (directly or indirectly) from splinters.
Posted by Jumping in Mud Puddles on January 21, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Oh, and I would probably be the first to go that way, Elyse…lol