Sally Hansen done me wrong. I thought we had a solid relationship. I thought I could count on her. I was sadly mistaken. Sally’s been leading me on, and this morning I discovered the deception.

The day started well enough. Tired of looking at the bruise under my toenail, I thought I’d put some polish on and let it dry while I wrote my morning pages. Because I have way too many bottles of nail color, it took a while to decide, but I finally chose one of Sally’s Nail Prisms that I hadn’t had a chance to use yet. I have a weakness for color changing polishes– I have some that go from one shade to another when exposed to sunlight or heat and some that appear to be one color from certain angles and a different color from others. This polish was one of the latter, and I looked forward to having toenails that would turn from plum to bronze. It didn’t matter that I was the only one who would see them, what with Mr. Karen being out of town and it not exactly being sandal weather yet.

I put on a base coat and then reached for the color. I was surprised to see the shade on the brush didn’t at all match what I saw in the bottle. What I was putting on my nails was dusty purple. If I’d wanted that, I would have picked a different polish out of the tackle box of nail supplies. But I didn’t feel like starting over, so I went with it. Once both coats were on and dry, I looked for the prism effect. I turned my toes this way and that, in sun and incandescent light, and got not even a hint of another color.

Where was the pretty plum that sparkled bronze when I turned it in the light? Closer inspection revealed that beauty was painted onto the bottle rather than contained inside it. Sally, you trickster, you! You charmed me with your iridescent gleamings and then let me down.

D is for Deception