Caste System of Womens Fingernails

Other women’s fingernails are styled, painted, decorated, clipped and buffed. Movie star-type nails. With little stars, stripes, polka dots, dainty designs for the seasons even. My nails are not these. My nails are chipped, not clipped. I cannot stand the sound of a fingernail file. You know how chalkboard scratching hurts some people’s ears? I could scratch a chalkboard all day long. It is a fingernail file that affects me like the rest of you. I cannot stand the sound of a fingernail file. I keep my nails in two modes: clean and dirty. Clean lasts maybe an hour after I bathe if I go straight to bed. Making dirty my usual everyday nail mode. Neon paint resides in the corner of two or three of my nails on a regular basis. Green and orange usually. My nails are often clay-stained from my Kansas dirt, which is all clay. Yes, thank you for asking, I do have garden gloves. Lovely pink ones with yellow flowers and green leaves. The cloth fingers are torn out. Which I love, because then I can feel the dirt. I have loved dirt since I was old enough to have a pail and a shovel. When I meet my friends, I pick the place, choosing the darkest of restaurants. Their fingernails glitter and glow in the dance of the tiny lights. My fingernails laugh, thinking of our next play time.