Nailed

Every trip it surprises me, the stuff I forget. I keep hoping I will get this down to a science. Maybe I can have a bag already packed, with doubles of everything I will need. It will mean buying another Water-Pik, electric toothbrush, tape recorder and all kinds of other stuff. But it will be worth it if it means I don't have to go crazy when I get here looking for drugstores and Radio Shacks.

Whenever you go somewhere you remember something you forgot last time. But you also forget something you remembered last time.

This trip what I forgot is nail polish. And polish remover. I didn't discover it till this morning, which was stupid, because lastnight I stopped in a drugstore, and after I got what I needed I was just kind of wandering looking for stuff to buy. And they had all these beautiful new nail polish colors. This is the kind of thing I am thinking about when I should be thinking about Leonard Pennario and his performance at Tanglewood of Prokofiev's Toccata. Prokofiev, Schmokofiev! (I had to write that, just because I love how it looks.)

With my braces keeping me from biting my nails, suddenly nail polish has become a big thing with me. I like to do them up nice, because it's great that something can look nice, as long as I am running around with a mouth full of metal. And I want to be able to show off my new nails to Leonard, because he has beautiful hands and goes for manicures so they always look nice. I have been bragging to Leonard about my new nails and now look, they're all chipped and I have forgotten my polish.

Here is my plan: After church I am going to run to a drugstore and pick up what I need. Then I am going to head over to meet Pennario as planned, and while I am there, I can quick fix my nails. I can say, "Leonard, you don't mind, do you, if I use your bathroom to do my nails?"

I can just hear him thinking: Why didn't I get Tim Page from the Washington Post to write my book? Why did I have to choose this ditz?

But desperate times call for desperate measures.