Damage Control
December 20th, 2009
My mom and I went to a certain makeup megastore to reup on beauty supplies. I needed blush, translucent duster, an eyeshadow, and a couple of nail polishes. Now let’s find out if you do what I do when you buy nail polish, because I think it’s normal but maybe it’s not.
I paint a little stripe of the color on my nail to see if I like it. There, I said it.
On this certain Sunday, I probably had 10 different colors dabbed on my digits. An embarrassing scene ensued when the manager asked me what I was doing. I stated the obvious. She made a cartoonishly disdainful face; she scooped up her lip until it was just under her eyebrow.
“Well, those aren’t testers. Now I have to damage that out.“
I felt like she’d just caught me letting my dog take a shit in her sandbox. I mean, she made it seem like I was trying out q-tips and putting them back or something. These are my fingernails. They’re dead and clean. And the brush goes back into paint. What can live in paint? I mean, salons use the same nail polish on everyone, and that doesn’t spread disease.
I don’t know, am I in the wrong? I’ve been doing that for 15 years, and no one has ever said word one about it. And if I consider that other people have maybe tried the nail polish I buy, it doesn’t bother me, in all honesty. I mean this is an upper middle class, suburban crowd in the first place, but even if it wasn’t, I’m pretty sure I’m not that fragile. I think I can fairly easily survive having the same nylon brush coated in formaldehyde and ethyl acetate touch me as touched a potentially dirty stranger. It’s not like tweaked out truckers and trailer park hookers are coming in there and trying out toothbrushes or something.
On another subject, I’m looking forward to the annual ornament exchange tomorrow. I haven’t done any holiday baking, but I think I’m going to take a short cut and make boxed cupcakes. Do you think that makes a good gift? A box of cake mix and a can of frosting?
Anyway, I’m going to make some red velvet cupcakes. It calls for white chocolate frosting, but I might be lazy and just use the canned chocolate frosting. I can still put the peppermint extract and the crushed candy canes. We’ll see.
