Time to buy stock in Band-aids

It was another day of skinned knees and bicycle wipeouts in the driveway this weekend, at least four crashes just today by my count, which means that we went through more than our typical allotment of Band-Aids. Good thing we bought backup boxes.

Within one two-hour span yesterday, I put three Band-Aids on my kids' knees. This does not count the number of Band-Aids they put on themselves. The only reason I know this is because they left the little wrappers behind on the bathroom floor.

Out of curiosity, I checked the stock price of Johnson and Johnson, which owns the Band-Aid brand, and it is currently trading at $66 a share. While a look at the last five years is not that promising as a potential investor - stock high $71 a share, low in the mid 40s - I have to think that Band Aids are on the upswing. The marketing alone of cartoon characters on them - Mickey Mouse, Cars movie characters, princesses - means that we are buying a box of them every week in the summer. I know other families are in the same boat.

But the true magic of Band-Aids is that they work on the placebo effect. Kid gets a Band-Aid on their cut and suddenly they start to recover. Add Neosporin and you've got instant healing. I witness this often. My kids could be bleeding profusely, little bits of sand mixed in their leg or arm gash, but you slap a Scooby Doo Band-Aid on it, and within minutes my son -- whose left elbow is broken, by the way -- is jumping off the retaining wall or riding his bike full speed into the garage, where he crashed into the wall yesterday. It takes more than a scrape to hold him back from putting himself in another dangerous situation.

Of course, it's because of Band-Aids that he has this kind of courage. I think I just came up with their new advertising campaign.