I got a manicure yesterday. I saw a sign for $15 french manicures a couple of blocks from my house and Gene likes it and it was V Day so I figured, what the hell? Even though I knew that getting a manicure on my nails, which are resistant to all forms of polish and immediately begin chipping and breaking when you paint them, is like folding $15 into a boat and playing Pooh Sticks with it in a nearby stream until it disintegrates.
The salon was small and playing daytime TV. I don’t know how you feel about daytime TV, but it makes me want to take a nail file to my eyes. Fortunately, I was soon distracted from this by the manicurist taking a nail file to my finger flesh. Somehow, the nail file edge managed to slice a big cut in my pinkie finger. As this was going on — for, as you can imagine, it takes some determined slicing before the file can cut you — I was noticing a lot of pain and thinking to myself, man, it’s been a long time since I got one of these. My fingers must be in really bad shape for them to have to file parts of them down like this. Not until the manicurist actually drew blood did she and I notice something was wrong.
I should probably have stopped the process right there. It seems like a bad idea to continue with a manicure while you have an open wound on your hand, especially if — you don’t yet know, but you strongly suspect and will be proved right — you can’t communicate to the manicurist that you’d like her to be gentle around the cut and maybe avoid some of the chemicals, lotions and buffing sticks that she would normally apply to that finger. For some reason, though — call it curiosity, shyness, self-loathing, what-have-you — I elected to continue the manicure, so now I have shiny fingers.
Also, I tipped.
Aaaand…that’s my story.
This is not my hand.