The Band-Aid

"Should I tell you a story?" I ask.

"Oh, I love stories! " She replies.

So I make up an impromptu tale:

There was once a pretty little girl. One day the girl went out to play in her sandbox. The little girl tripped while playing and cut her knee. She ran inside and her mother put a nice new X-men band-aid on the wound. The band-aid was cute and made the wound feel better and soon the wound was forgotten.

The next day her mother came to the little girl and said, "It is time to take off your band-aid dear. The wound must breath so it can heal. Do you want me to pull it off slowly or yank it off quick?"

"What is the difference?" The girl asked.

"Well if I pull it slowly it will seem like you are in control but the pain will be harder and your anguish longer. But if I pull it off quickly, the pain will be gone before you have time to feel it and you can go out to play."

"So," I ask, her when I am done. "Which way will the pretty little girl choose?"

"Tell me more about those X-Men band-aids...."

Sometimes we avoid things that are hard to do. Sometimes like the band-aid the anguish and the pain is made worse by the fear and the slow approach we take.