Perfect Nails

I once had a student come to me at the beginning of a class and complain long and loudly about the woman she had sat next to on the train.

"All she did, the whole ride, was file her nails and inspect them, then file them some more. They were long and dark red and she just had to have them perfect! She didn't talk to anybody, and she never even looked out the window. All she did was fuss over those perfect nails!"

I have wondered about the conversation every once in a while, and I wonder a bit more now that I am getting older. For some reason I spend way more time getting my nails to look good than I ever did when I was younger. It is possible there are getting to be more and more body parts that are way past the possibility of perfection, so the nails are a safer bet.

A couple of years ago I had an acquaintance tell me I had beautiful hands, and that lovely complement has stuck with me. That may also be a reason to pay a little more attention to those appendages, all the way to their fingertips. I have always liked the way a person's hands expressed his or her lifestyle, and I do like to think that my hands express the diverse and wonderful life I have been able to live.

I love hands that show hard work, that are calloused and gnarled and powerful. I also am fond of the long, lithe fingers of a professional ballerina. The perfect set of nails, for me, would not be dark red, but clean and natural in length and color. I might also mention that every time I go out of my way to do a full manicure on myself (I hate having them done professionally), within 24 hours I break one nail right down to the quick. Therefore the idea of perfect nails is one I have great difficulty achieving for more than a fleeting moment.

When I think of my student and her vehement distaste for the woman on the train, one woman I know keeps coming to mind. She was a therapist I worked with about 25 years ago. At that time she was in her early forties, an alcoholic in recovery for 13 years, and divorced. She had left her husband and her children to sink deeper into her addiction, and was dealing with the death of her teenage son in a car accident. The intersection where he died was one she had to pass every day to get to work.

In spite of all this, she was wise and funny and a tremendous role model in therapeutic techniques. She made sure she was dressed well and appropriately for all of our consulting appointments. She also made sure she asked me to please put away some cold medicine I had purchased for myself while on a three-day job in a distant town. We were sharing a hotel room, and I had developed a nasty cold. After thirteen years of sobriety, she could not tolerate the presence of a bottle (it didn't matter what kind) that contained alcohol. I immediately put it out of sight. She gave me a lesson in addiction I will never forget.

My point in so thoroughly describing this woman was that she had perfect nails. They were all the exact same length, about 1/4 inch beyond the tips of her fingers, immaculately polished and buffed to a spotless sheen. I don't think I had ever previously seen nails like that on anyone, so they were worthy of notice. I gave a lot of thought to those nails when I heard of the woman on the train, and a lot of thought to the life that my friend and co-worker had lived. It is possible that the train passenger was actually my friend, but even if she wasn't, she deserved sympathy for those perfect nails. They may well have been all she had.

The possibilities are almost limitless!

For the first time in my life I am in a cast. I am thankful that it took me almost 64 years to break something, and I am assuming that it will be another 64 before it happens again. I have had bone density tests, and my bones are very strong. I just bent things in the wrong direction, added a lot of weight, and snap - OW!

At least that part is over with now, and the pain has subsided by quite a bit. Currently I am left with one very large and solid reminder that I broke a highly necessary bone in my right foot: a cast that reaches from the bottom of my toes to just underneath my knee, and is about nine inches in diameter. That kind of thing on a person's leg will draw comments.

It will especially draw comments due to the fact that I am busily decorating it with large numbers of flora and fauna, cartoon-style, and invitations are out to my many artistic friends to add to the design. It will be very bright, highly amusing, and probably a bit bizarre. Sadly, the story of the actual break is downright boring - I got out of bed and tried to walk on a leg that was totally asleep. The foot bent behind me, and the rest is history, painful history.

Once I hit the grocery store, the craft shop, and my health club the numbers of people asking "How did you break your foot?" are going to grow in geometric proportions, and that story just won't do. I have, for the first (and hopefully last) time the option to create the wildest story of all time explaining how my poor foot met its demise. The sky is the limit! In fact, the sky is also a good starting point.....

1. I was tandem skydiving and landed just below my partner so his foot came down on mine and broke it.

2. I was bungee jumping off the George Washington Bridge in New York City and I bounced back up so far that my foot hit the bottom of the inbound traffic lanes just as a tractor-trailer was passing, creating extra weight at the moment I touched.

3. I was visiting my favorite uncle in Florida when I went out to the canal behind his house. As I reached the dock, a mother and baby manatee jumped out of the water to avoid a wayward motorboat. I caught the baby in mid-air, but the mother landed on my foot.

4. I was on a motorcycle, still in Florida, being chased by a mob of angry alligators after I jumped a ramp over their favorite pond. I ran out of gas and one of them bit my foot.

5. I was dressed as a clown for a local charity children's party when I happened to honk my clown-horn at the one parent in the place who was terrified of clowns. She picked up the chair at her carefully and tastefully arranged luncheon table and threw it at me, where it landed on my foot.

6. I was hiking in the northern Rockies when the wind hit a huge redwood, knocking it down. It almost missed me, but the very tip of the trunk landed on my foot.

7. Same hike, same redwood, but this time an abominable snowman who had been hiding behind the tree saw me, saw I had a camera, and smacked my foot with a broken branch just as I was about to take his picture.

8. Same forest, same tree, same yeti, but this time he was being chased by a crew from National Geographic, jumped into my arms for safety, missed, and landed on my foot.

9. At a posh resort hotel near the Canadian border, went out on my balcony and was bombarded by a flock of Canadian Geese headed for their northern home. Fell off the balcony into the hotel pool, and landed untouched except for my foot. It hit the diving board on the way down.

10. I was asked to stand in for a member of Queen Elizabeth's palace guard, and after forty-five minutes of standing at attention holding my rifle, I dozed off. As I did, I loosened my grip on the rifle and it landed on my foot. Fifteen tourists got the photo, and it will be posted on the Internet any time now.

I think ten interesting versions are enough to do the trick. Anyone who wants to ask deserves a good story, and not the "getting out of bed" blather. If they care enough to need to know the horrid details, then I feel I owe them a tale worthy of their concern. Then maybe I'll let them sign the cast.