Strange Conversations: Part One Hundred and Twenty-Five
Posted 2 May 2009 in Strange Conversations by Catriona
Things you should not assume about geeks: just because your geek/former Goth boyfriend spent his formative years painting tiny models of orcs doesn’t mean that he’s either willing or able to help you manage the perfect French manicure on your right hand.
ME: Could you grab my some tissues? I think I’m going to need to strip this.
NICK: I’m sorry.
ME: No, that’s fine. It’s a little tricky. And you were working with an unfamiliar medium. It’s not like you’re used to dealing with the viscosity of nail polish.
NICK: Well, I did used to use black nail polish.
ME: Well, you should have done a better job, then!
NICK: It was about ten years ago!
ME: That’s not the point. Applying nail polish is like riding a bicycle. Margaret Atwood says so.
NICK: What?
ME: You know how to ride a bicycle?
NICK: Well, I used to do it. I wouldn’t vouch for being able to do it now.
ME: But that’s the whole point of a bicycle! That you don’t forget how to ride it! It’s a proverb and everything.
NICK: Proverbs have never really worked for me, Treen.
(Slightly sputtering pause)
ME: Fine. But that’s going on the blog!
NICK: Fair enough.
ME: And I’m going to ret-con it to make it look as though I included a reference to Margaret Atwood while we were actually having the conversation.
NICK: What?
ME: Well, in The Handmaid’s Tale. Where, even though she’s been living in this post-revolutionary society where women are used as breeding machines, she mentions that the little things come back to you easily. Like how you can’t put the second coat of nail polish on too soon, or the first coat will wrinkle. I’m going to work that in. Then I’ll look intellectual.
NICK: Yeah!
And I did work it in. Seamlessly.
But I still don’t have a French manicure.
Share your thoughts [7]
1
Wendy wrote at May 2, 09:40 am
and you do look very intellectual also :)
shame about the manicure
2
Catriona wrote at May 2, 09:57 am
I thought I’d look intellectual!
It’s my ambition in life to be able to give myself a decent French manicure. I don’t really care for coloured nail polishes any more, but I do like wearing my nails long.
Alas, I can manage my left hand on a good day, but I’m not ambidextrous enough to manage the white tips on my left hand single handedly (as it were).
3
Wendy wrote at May 2, 12:10 pm
playing the piano means i have never had long fingernails…the clicking!
toenails however a different story…lots of colour!
4
Drew wrote at May 3, 02:03 am
that is brillant, but I don’t know what a French manicure is, I blame my cultural upbringing.
5
Catriona wrote at May 3, 02:22 am
You’ll have seen a French manicure, though, Drew: it’s just the one where the tips of the nails are painted a solid white and then the entire nail coated in a “natural” finish. It basically gives a bright, hyper-real effect by heightening the natural colour of long nails.
It’s that white tip that’s difficult to paint. Even with the little sticky strips they give you, it’s hard to get a smooth straight line, especially on your dominant hand.
6
Matthew Smith wrote at May 5, 05:55 am
Wow I like how this one has some kind of inter-textual thing going on where it references it’s own ret-conning thus undermining the readers assumed implicit trust of the narrator.
7
Catriona wrote at May 5, 08:06 am
Yeah, but, Matt, that’s just because I don’t get out much.
;)
Or, I could be the new Nabakov.
Hmmm.
No, probably not.