According to Sonny and Cher, it’s the little things that mean a lot.

According to Alice Cooper, the little things are what drive one wild.

And thousands of splashy inspirational signs abound quip that the little things are precisely what take up the most room in our hearts.

This is certainly an enchanting thought.

But last week, it was a little thing, a nearly microscopic specimen that tested our son’s pain tolerance in a terrible way, thus testing our own squeamish fear factor as we had to come to our son’s aid. Put simply, splinters are the worst.

These little shards that exist in every day wooden products among us all patiently lay in wait for a finger to be placed just precisely so, and then they attack without any real warning .

But unlike other surprising, unsuspected nicks such as, say, paper cuts, splinters are absolutely the worst, because they then must be removed from deep within one’s epidermal confines.

And their removal can be a far more excruciating process if the little slivers are tucked in deeply enough. Sometimes, if one is lucky enough to have a splinter not fully embedded, it can be simply removed with tweezers. Easy tweezy.

But this is not always the case.

Last week, our son got a splinter – removing art supplies from a wooden crayon box, of all things.

That evening, a close relative whose medical training and stomach strength far exceed that of mine and my husband’s came by to attack the ghastly little fragment in my son’s finger .

He inspected the splinter closely with a work light as my husband and I tried to distract our teary 4-year-old.

A difficult evening ensued, and even when I tried to tackle the dastardly matchwood myself, I too found little success. I was trying to fight off my own squeamishness as my husband and our relative tried to help our son fight his squirminess.

Then our youngest chimed in with sympathetic cries of his own.

We looked at the clock. We’d fought a good valiant fight, but we were stretching far too late into the night.

We applied Neosporin, a Lightning McQueen bandage, and called it a day, fully aware that letting that splinter stay could lead to tougher issues.

The next day, my aunt shared with us her own tough lessons learned with splinter scenarios gone wrong, reminding us that we needed to bite the splinter bullet and have a doctor check out our son’s finger once and for all.

His pediatrician closely examined it, initially planning to apply a local anesthetic. I held my son on my lap, but I was the one that needed to get a grip.

If my little guy could be brave, so could I. Deep breaths.

To everyone’s surprise, the splinter had started to make its way out on its own. The doctor was able to grasp an end with a tweezer and remove it, as my kiddo only flinched a bit. She went in deeper to get the broken off portion, and I saw a worried look pass in his eyes. But he was generally calm, and it was soon over.

Upon checking out, a lady at the front desk apologetically asked for our co-pay.

There was no need for her to apologize– had we not tackled the splinter then, it may have infected him later on. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that the experience was an easy one.

I know I’ll always have a difficult time combatting my own squeamishness, but I’m taking baby steps.

For now, I’m glad my son was a-OK. To think that a 30- second splinter removal process and seeing my happy little high-fiving guy was what made my day a cheery one.

I guess those brightly-colored inspirational signs are right after all.

It really is the little things that take up the most room in our hearts.

— Michelle Cote is the art director of the Journal Tribune. She enjoys cooking, baking, and living room dance-offs with her husband, two boys and a dog. She can be contacted at mcote@journaltribune.com.