Ridges

“Your nails have ridges.” The sales girl at Calgary airport said. She could not have been in her mid-twenties and adorable as only the young and enthusiastic can be. “Healthy looking but ridged.”

Having never noticed that before, I looked down stared expecting to see something like the Blue Ridged Mountains having formed since I washed them twenty minutes before.

They looked the same as they always did.

Admittedly, my nail care is eating well and cutting regularly. I don’t bother with polish, although I would love to have the wonderful designs that my favourite banking teller has. To now I’ve been too cheap.

“Let me show you something.” The salesgirl said. She took out a cube. “Give me your hand.”
She rubbed one nail with one side of the cube, switched to another then another, then another.

“See,” she said.

The nail was a little shiner than the others.

“Isn’t that wonderful. The cube is just $20.”

I did have $20 Canadian dollars still on me. I’d planned to buy a book.

I moved my hand to the left and right. In some lights the nail recovering from ridge syndrome was shinier but in another light it looked about the same.
“I don’t think so,” I said.

She was a good sales girl, and had I trained her, I would have been proud when she asked “Why?”

My hands are not that of a young woman. Veins show. However, they work wonderfully, doing and undoing buttons, opening doors, typing on a keyboard, all the things one wants hands to do. They do not have to have shiny nails.

She looked amused.

So she wouldn’t get discouraged I told her I’d done sales training, and she was really good.

For the past week I’ve gone around with one shinier nail. I’ve sat in a way that only that nail shows. No one has stopped to admire it. Nor has anyone compared my ridged to non-ridged nails or gasped in horror at the ridges.

And with $20? I bought the book Help. I think I’ll get more pleasure out of it than shiny nails.