The lady at the nail salon looked at me and said, are you sure? Blue? You?
(At your age?)
Blue, I told her.
I mean, it’s polish. It comes off. And what’s the point of having fingernails if you can’t have some fun with them?
I’ve bitten my nails probably as long as I’ve had them. Terrible habit, blah blah blah, filthy, blah, I know, I’ve always known. I tried those drugstore fake nails for a while. The stuff you put on to stop you from biting. I gave up chewing on them for Lent. Nothing worked. I’d get stressed or nervous or distracted and go right back to it.
I don’t smoke, I don’t drink heavily, I justified it as my one bad habit (like my eating habits don’t count) and made a joke out of it.
Then a few weeks ago I had a big party to go to, and wanted to look nice, and a new nail place opened up by my house, and I figured screw it, there have been advances in fake nails since I was in high school, at least if the girls on the bus in my neighborhood are any indication. So I made an appointment, went in and got fakes put on.
Short fakes. I type, garden, don’t want to be that girl who’s all “ooh, my hands,” so I got little short ones, but there they were. I picked out a pale pink polish, inoffensive: Don’t notice me.
“Too old,” the nail tech sniffed. “You’re young. Sexy.”
(I liked this chick immediately.)
Dark, dark purple.
I couldn’t stop showing people, like I’d just gotten engaged. I tapped them on the table and clattered them together and used them to open bags I otherwise would have needed a knife for. I scritched the animals and laughed at their confusion. I went online and started looking at other polishes, the wilder the better. I’ve always messed with my hair when my life was sucking; now I had a whole new thing to play with.
The best part is, they’re basically indestructible. I can’t chew them, even if I still wanted to. And I don’t want to. I’d much rather figure out which alien color I’m going to paint them next.
What bad habit have you broken?
A.