Cross-Painting

E's elementary school held a Fall Carnival this evening, for which I (probably because I was directly under the eye of his teacher, who reminds me of both my mother and one of my former piano instructors...meaning I do whatever she tells me...) volunteered 45 minutes to help set-up the classroom.

This year, Mrs. S landed the salon room, which is apparently a hugely popular thing with the tykes. After experiencing it first-hand, I'd have to say I agree.

The salon this year consisted of 2 nail tables, 2 temporary tattoo tables, and "hair painting".

After serving my sentence, I for some reason landed a job painting nails. Now, I rarely do my own nails, because I play guitar, which is not conducive to nicely polished fingernails. In addition, I have never liked the effect of nail polish on my stumpy "man-hand" fingers, and I prefer to leave them nude and therefore ignored. Also, I have a boy-child, and not a girl-child. This is all meant to illustrate that I don't paint nails.

Well, I did today. There was a huge rush for the nail painting table, and I was faced with the dire prospect of doing tiny nail after tiny nail under the critical eyes of countless mothers. I took a long, long, long time doing it, too.

The interesting thing was that after a certain time, I ended up painting boys' nails.

Now, these weren't little boys (meaning above the age of 8 or so). According to them all, this was "the one time of the year" when this was acceptable, so they were determined to get their due. And not all of them chose black, in fact only 1 did. The rest chose any combination of blue, red, and/or pink. I'm serious. I painted more boy nails than girl nails, all told.

While I was painting some kid's nails a brilliant shade of pink, my own boy-child happened to walk up, my faithful parents in tow. After explaining what I was doing, I teasingly asked if I'd be allowed to paint his nails. At first, I met with a sharp no, but then apparently he changed his mind. Probably due to the fact that the boy whose nails I was painting was much bigger than E is. My mom offered to paint them for him, since I was busy, but E insisted on waiting his turn. He then somberly sat down in front of me, handed me a bottle of black nail polish, and held out his hand.

My baby's fingernails are black. And on purpose.

And the rest of the evening, he kept telling people that his mom had put "makeup" on him...