Best of Blogs #4

I Don't Deserve Shiny Smooth Fingernails, originally posted 3/19/06.

Today I was at the mall and a salesman at a center aisle kiosk asked me if I wanted to see something amazing. Skepticism up, but interested to see what I would be "amazed" by, I said, "sure."

The man gently took my right hand. This was getting weird fast. But I waited to see what would happen. "See these lines?" he asked, pointing at the vertical ridges on my nails. I nodded. "Everyone has them. Watch this." He started scraping one of my fingernails with a rectangular thingamajigger. He explained that it was some diamond thing or something that got rid of the ridges. Sure enough, the ridges were gone.

"But wait! There's more!" he assured me. He turned the rectangular thing. Now it was a cotton surface. It felt warm and soothing, like a massage for my nails.

Then came the silk side. It made my nail very shiny, as though I had painted it with clear nail polish. All without any chemicals.

He was right, I was amazed. And he wasn't even done! There was also some chemical thing that removed excess cuticles like magic.

I was even more amazed when he told me it cost 40 bucks for the whole kit. (It also included lotion.)

I told him I couldn't afford it. Through conversation, he ended up offering it to me for $25. I still declined. But in the midst of his sales pitch, he was telling me that it was such a good deal because the kit would last 2 years and someone who gets a manicure twice a month spends about $600 a year on her nails.

I told him I'd never gotten a manicure. He was shocked. "But you are a beautiful woman; you deserve beautiful nails! This is a treat for you!"

I don't think it would have been wrong to spend $25 on the nail kit. I do think it would have been wrong to buy it under the premise that for whatever reason, I somehow deserve shiny smooth fingernails. Because the (beautiful) starving children in Africa deserve food, and it's just not always an option. And here I am, being told I should buy a nail kit because I deserve it.

The last discount he offered me, which dropped it from $32 to $25, was because he said I was a "woman of God." It was that comment that truly stopped me from buying the kit. Because lets face it, the one nail that he treated looks awesome. And my other nine nails don't match it now. But if I am a woman of God, I cannot fall for the sales pitch that I deserve something so extravagant as shiny, smooth nails.