You’ll probably be unsurprised to learn that I was a klutz as a kid.

What brings this up is that for some unknown reason I remembered “black drawing salve” this evening.

I got a lot of splinters (worst was when I filled both hands with splinters from playing with an old broom handle.) Occasionally when they couldn’t get the splinters out, my parents would put black drawing salve on the area, and then would remove the splinter later.

What I remember most is that it stank like you wouldn’t believe, and I never really felt that it did any good.

Surprisingly, when I googled drawing salve, I got about 45k results, with the top ones saying how it’s still around because it really works.

So I’m now curious as to whether my memory is incorrect. It’s possible that 1) all the episodes with splinters ran together so it just felt like it didn’t work because I was always getting splinters dug out of my hands or 2) my parents didn’t leave it on long enough for it to work. (I must have been four of five during my most vivid memories. Can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to keep something like that on my hands.)