SOMETHING TO HIDE

I just painted my finger nails mint chocolate chip ice-cream green. I know. Big mistake. And not just one coat, but TWO, on account of I was on the phone talking to my sister and she was busy shouting for her toddler to stop shaving her arms, so I zoned out and when I woke up, the damage was done.

Which brings us to today's elephant in the room. Lisa's hands are no longer age appropriate.

Actually, Lisa's hands have never been age appropriate, on account of she was born with extremities that belong to an old woman—some sort of mix-up in Heaven—pretty sure somebody's gonna get fired over that one. I have no sweat or oil glands, thus not an ounce of moisture and so many wrinkles it would keep a palm reader busy for a lifetime. But I've learned to live with it and even made up some really awesome lies to get me through elementary school. I had to. Kindergarteners are cruel, people. And somebody really ought to make them illegal.

We were forced to play a lot of hand holding games back then. Red rover, red rover and ring-around-the-rosies would seem benign to a normal kid with sweaty palms. But little miss cracked and bleeding over here considered it a death sentence.  When the teacher announced it was time for P.E., the panic set in.

It always turned out the same. Some kid would grab my hand, then jerk away like I had injected them with venom.

"EW! GROSS! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR HANDS?"

Then they'd stare at me accusingly before making a deal with some other unsuspecting child to "Hey, trade places?" That kid would then repeat the actions and words almost verbatim, and so on and so on until I was out of fresh kids.

So I lied.

One day, when the inevitable confrontation came, I chose a new response.

"Well, see, one day? My dad was working on his car. And there was this big pan full of something he needed for the car. Like car oil. Yeah. It was car oil. But it was really bad car oil. Poison car oil. And he told me not to touch it. He said, 'Lisa, don't touch that!' But it was too late, because I had already touched it. And from then on, my hands have looked like this."

I held up my wrinkly paws for them to examine, and like a car doing a 180 on a racetrack, they went from vengeful villagers to Christine Daaé.  I was a creature to pity and they yelled to each other to, "COME HEAR WHAT HAPPENED TO LISA!" Lots of them asked what kind of poison oil it was, so they could never, ever, ever touch it themselves, while the brave ones gingerly reached out, hoping they would live to tell. From that point on, fewer kids recoiled and I was a little bit famous.

I didn't feel a bit bad about it, either. You do what you have to do in order to make it through those horrid years. We all had something to hide, and if you could blame it on poison car oil, more power to you.

(I also used to lick my hands in order to mimic sweat before grabbing onto my unsuspecting square dancing partner, but that's another story for another day. And I'm sorry, Troy.)

Anyway, right now, on day three of this polish, I am realizing it's the adult version of poison car oil. If I can get you distracted by the absurd color on my hands, you might not notice how corpse-like they are, and that 7 out of 10 fingers have splits so deep I had to fill them in with super glue.

Scary as hell, right? I told you we all have something to hide.