No bells saved me today, and I work in a school.

Last night, I painted my fingernails red. In the history of my fingernails, they've seen polish...eh...maybe 50 or so times (49 of those times occured in high school. I exxagerate. 20 of those times occured in the 5th grade. 29 times occured in high school). I even bought some top coat, a very rare thing for me to do by the way, to seal in the polish so that it wouldn't chip easily the next day (and trust me, this nail polish isn't going anywhere). Can you imagine? That's how serious I was about painting my nails. Now, I don't know a thing about cuticles (are they good or bad? Should they be pushed back or pulled out?), so the art of painting my nails is really about slathering on nail polish and keeping it off my actual fingers and that's all. It's so much harder than it looks. I am usually a perfectionist, but when I was in the fifth grade, I decided I didn't have to be a perfectionist at painting my own nails. That's when I knew about everything.

And so everything was going smoothly. Slip-slop. The brand of top coat I purchased suggested that I apply it over my wet, freshly painted nails. Okay, done and done. My nails looked so purdy. Until they dried. And then they looked like the world's first seedless strawberries.

I was a little confused about that. But last night I thought, well, nobody is going to notice my stupid nails anyway. They're just for me to look down at when I type and that's that.

But who would have thought that my boss, who is getting all girly in her 40s (because, you know, 40s are the new 30s), decided for the FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE to get a fancy French manicure this weekend? That she too would have the urge to pay a little attention (to the tune of $75+, I swear) to her nails, and come to work this lovely Monday morning flashing them in my face? Who would have thought? Not me. This is what I thought: why didn't I have my hands stuffed snuggly under my armpits when she said, "oh, you got your nails done too?!" Oh. Fuck. If I was Zac Morris, I would have made the world stop and dashed the fuck home. But in the moment I was feeling more like a Screech.

Like all girly girls in their 40s do, she reached for my hands, adjusted them palms down and questioned, "Glitter?" She said it just like that bitch Jessie Spano, too. And "Glitter?" really meant, you did this crappy job yourself, didn't you? I tried to explain, but I sounded so stupid. "The gigantic pits in my nails are so uniform and precise, it's like I payed for this, but nope...they just kind of dried a little funky."

And when someone gets their nails done nicely, everybody starts paying attention to everybody's fingernails. At least women do. No matter who got their nails done in a circle of gabbing women, everybody's hands are in the spotlight. Because people want to know, in that moment, how their nails measure up to the lady who spent $75 on a manicure. And how the person to their right and left measures up.

Let's just say this: it was a really, really, really long Monday.