My fingernails and I having a battle. Yep, me and my nails. Generally I never can grow my nails long. I always want to though. If I do, and dare to coat them with some pretty color, they immediately break. Or the polish chips after the first day. My response to that is to paint over the affected areas until I have 18 layers on them.  I keep applying polish mostly because it’s such an effort for me to get the polish on. I’m no good at applying it nicely.

Basically, my nails grow best when I ignore them and I’ve been ignoring them. My nails have gotten long – nothing gross or world record deserving – but long enough that now, after wanting them for so long, I can’t function with nails of this length. I can’t type well. I’ve nearly put my eye out a few times. I’ve scratched myself and others. How do women do this? About the only thing these nails appear good for is scratching behind the dog’s ears. He is loving the nails.

As I was pondering this situation (no, it was a not a highly intellectual day for me) I remembered my first real job working at the women’s clothing store Loehmann’s. Loehmann’s was a store offering designer clothes and accessories for women. It was close to home – I could walk if I had to – and my friend Teri got a job there was well.  Loehmann’s was known for a few things; open dressing rooms, discounted designer clothing and daily shipments of clothes.

The open dressing rooms were one of the worst things about the place. There was just one big room, and as employees we would stand in there to assist the shoppers. If they didn’t want the clothes, we took them and put them on a conveyer belt that whisked them to the back where they were put on racks to go back on the floor. If they needed another size, we were there to run out and look for it.  So often a group of women would come in together and instead of getting the size 14 a shopper might need, she would get a size 6 pair of pants and then, when she couldn’t pull them up over their knees, tell us the brand ran small and ask us to get a larger size. Ran small, my ass. Just get the size you need! Stop worrying about being a larger size than your friends. (Still good advice). These seemed to be the women that came in almost daily to check out the new shipments.

Sometimes women would attempt to try on clothes with no underwear on. It’s hard to understand why someone would want to try on pants without underwear but there appeared to be plenty of people willing to do so at Loehmann’s.  That was the worst because you were supposed to nicely tell them they couldn’t try on the clothes. As teenagers, most of us would pretend we didn’t see it. If we were lucky enough to be in the room with an adult, we would point it and let them inform the customer.

Back to the nails though…On many occasions a customer would be trying on an outfit and ask me to help her zip it up because she didn’t want to ruin her nails or her nails were too long. I hated this.  This was the second worst thing besides the commando-busting duty you could get. I was always terrified that I would zip up the customer’s skin or something. I wasn’t so sympathetic then but now, with my own lengthy talons, I get their struggle although I’ve able to dress myself without assistance. Score one for me! It’s been fun pretending to be all glamorous and girly, but it’s just not my style. I’m a danger to myself and others. So with some sadness but mostly relief, I’ll have to cut them to a workable length once again.

Sometimes you have to just let your dreams go or as in my case, just cut them shorter than you hoped.