How Can You Be From Here, Its Hot!

I went to a nail salon at the mall today, something I never do, but will have to consider on a more regular basis. It was while I was sitting there in that big massage chair, my feet in what I hope was relatively clean, warm bubbling water that I realized that the people all around me were insane. And in so realizing this I allowed my eyes to drift to somewhere a few feet above people's heads as I tried to not look like I was taking in every word they said. Its an art, evesdropping for all you are worth all the while maintaining a look of bored vapidity.

To digress for a minute, I've always thought that nail salons are strange places, microcosms of some other universe. There are woman there who will work on my hands and feet, smiling, nodding their heads while unintelligably asking me if Iwant one service or another. Since I didn't understand them in the first place I end up spending forty dollars for things like salt rub, hot oil, and stupidly hot towels that are so uncomfortable it feels like my skin is peeling off underneath, all while smiling back and trying not to be impolite. I don't want to tell them I don't understand them, so when I smile and nod to their questions that cha-ching sound reverborates through the salon. I'm a sucker and they know it. But, at the same time they are smiling and nodding to me and I am smiling and nodding at them, they are also speaking in their native tongue to each other and laughing. I wonder if they are laughing because I am yet another silly woman who paid forty dollars for soaking her hands in the very same vegetable oil I have in my cupboard at home that I paid three dollars a quart for.

But what has always really confused me is not that I try to engage in coversation with these woman, but that other people don't. Other customers sit there while their nails are clipped, calluses are scraped and polish is applied without so much as a smile in the direction of the person bent over their stinky feet. How is it possible to sit there while someone works on you like a car on a rack and not even acknowledge their presence? Its just weird I tell ya.

But that is not the insanity from today, at least not specifically. In the salon with me were four other customers and five employees. And these are some of the conversations I heard....


"Where you from"
"I'm from here"
"Here, where's here?"
"Here, Santa Clarita."
"You're from Santa Clarita? But its hot!"

My only conclusion of this is that no babies can be born in a city with a temperature that reaches over 100 in the summer. I wonder if that's because of nature or city regulations?

Then there was... (woman on her blue tooth)

"There are ants in my car. I have no idea, maybe from that cut grass in the wig".

Ok, this one I don't begin to have any ideas on.

Then...(and I swear to heavens themselves that I actually heard this)

"You want this color on your toes?"
"Well, yeah, if I put that color (pointing to the one on her fingers), how will I tell my toes and fingers apart"

Because it IS so hard to figure out which get socks and which get a fork.

My GOD people. Really????????


As always, thanks for spending this time with me!