COTTON BALLS ARE A STAPLE of my ostomy changing procedure. They have to be all-cotton, as the ones that include a synthetic substance aren’t as absorbent and do an inferior job. I use them to clean the skin around the stoma with warm water. As an item, cotton balls have been around only since 1937, when a machine was invented to produce them in mass quantities. Before that, there was another kind of cotton ball. Cotton balls (dances) were a prominent feature of social life in North Carolina beginning in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These dances celebrated special events, such as the harvesting of a cotton crop (altho’ I don’t think the folks that actually did the harvesting were invited to the balls). Then there is the hilarious scene in “Catch-22” where Milo Minderbinder asks Yosarrian to eat something chocolate that he has created. Yosarrian pops it into his mouth and a moment later spits it out in disgust. It turns out to be a chocolate-covered cotton ball. Cotton balls may have various medical or cosmetic uses, but they’re not edible. The scene is enhanced by the fact that Milo has to climb a tree to get to Yosarrian, who is sitting naked on a limb looking down upon a funeral. If you haven’t read “Catch-22” you’re missing out on one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, and one of the best anti-war novels ever written.
HenryM
Dec 18, 2021 8:01 am
