Challenge 45: Fake Nails

227. The 100 percent perfect

When one gets bored, she needs to do something innovative to stimulate her brain. Therefore, when another boring day of my holidays arrived, I wanted to turn it into something completely energetic and lively. Of course, with my sister also enjoying her winter vacation alongside of me, it gave me an opportunity to do something much more interactive and fun, because in matters like these, my sister can think very fast.

We both bite our nails, which I know is a terrible habit because it makes my fingers look ugly and they even start to bleed sometimes. Nevertheless, my nails have never been longer than a few centimeters before I chew them off to bits. Earlier that week, we had visited our cousin sister who had a bunch of fake nails sitting on her dresser. My sister's eyes flung wide open when she saw these and asked our cousin if we could take some home. Being the sweet sister she is, she told us to knock ourselves out. And now, there they were, sitting on the table of my room, painted clumsily in bright red paint by my sister. We sat around the short, round table, deciding who was going to try them on first. Being the eldest, I used my I-a-older-than-you-so-I-get-to-go-first tactic to claim the first try.

Human beings are reckless sometimes and so were we when we applied some superglue (and they mean super) on my short, uneven fingernails and carefully placed the fake nails on top. After we were done, I held out my hand for both of us to observe the result of our excitement. There they were, my hands, looking like they had been grabbed right out of the Fairytale book with an evil witch. We ran to our mother to show them off. My mother, giving rise to her childishness, acted scared and powerless beneath the sharpness of those fingernails. We danced around a bit, took some pictures with the gleaming, red nails, and decided that it was time for my sister to put them on.

However, we hadn't realized how strong the glue could be. As I sat there, my hands soaked it water, tears of pain started to gather in my eyes. I tried removing the nails, but they were stuck so strongly to the fingernails that they refused to move. With a little push and pull, I got through my four fingers. Because of the little nail paint that was left from a long time ago, they came off fine, removing just a layer of my fingernails. Horrified as I looked at my thumb, the last of the remaining, I heard my sister laugh. She giggled and snickered, her hands clutching stomach and her eyes tearing up with all the laughter. Words streamed out of her mouth along the lines of, "A minute ago, you were show them off. Now look what happened: you are suffering. That was a really stupid thing to do, Nanu. Thank god I didn't go first." I became even angrier after she said this and tried my best to ignore her. She continued to laugh at my supposed "stupidity."

It finally came off in the end along with a layer of my thumbnail, which was really painful. After the pain had settled, I realized what a stupid thing it was for me to do. I joined my sister and we continued to laugh our heads off. Then, at that moment, I realized how perfect this situation was, the 100 perfect perfect, where we were both having so much fun. I realized the importance of being a sister, of being mean to her but at the same time laughing along with her and indicating that I was just teasing and being ... well, an elder sister.