Nail Salon Encounter
My emotion still goes up and down, over a week after my last nail salon visit.
I walked into the nail salon for my appointment, sat down at the table. The technician started the normal greetings, and small talk. I was quite absent minded, however. I was staring at this little boy, about 4, sitting in a chair in the row in front of me, playing his video games on a cellphone. He was wearing green converse, shoes laces untied, and shoes on the wrong feet. His long sleeve shirts had something caked on the elbows.
A lot was going through my mind. This is a cute little boy, reminds me of my own son. Man, I miss my kids! But why would a little boy like him sitting in a nail salon? Must came with the mom. Why would he be playing video games on a cellphone? Must be mom. I started shaking my head silently. You should not take a small kid to a nail salon. The fume is very harmful to kids, everyone knows that, the technicians all wear masks! Then why a 4 year old is playing on her cellphone? I don’t understand… don’t our kids have too much screen time already? Don’t we kick and scream and claim cellphone is toxic, ruining our capability of interaction with real people in real life? Oh yeah, she must need him to be quiet. Sure, as a parent, I admit, we all have moments when we get frustrated with little kids, ours especially, and prefer a little me time. That’s probably why she is here pampering herself. I shouldn’t judge. I don’t know her story.
All of a sudden, I heard the little boy say:”mom, she is crying!” Puzzled, I wondered if the boy was referring to a character in the video game. Mom said, no, she is asleep. Then I heard a baby noise, the little boy jumped off his chair, skipped around his mom and looked down. I leaned to my right side and saw a baby basket on the floor, 2 little feet hanging out of the blanket. The mom turned to the right, kicked the basket a little. The little boy shoved the bottle into the baby’s mouth and walked off. He said, mom, I am hungry. Mom looked over her shoulder, sighed and tossed over a tube of crackers. Her hand flew by in the air, ran through her multi toned silky smooth shinny hair, I caught a glimpse of her 1 inch long acrylic black nails.
So many questions popped in my head: how does she change diapers? How does she help her son tie shoe laces? How does she even get her hands close to her babies? How does she type, cook, clean, or even button her own pants? And on top of it all, she had to bring 2 kids into a nail salon that smells like chemicals… Soon enough, little boy was bored of video games, started messing with brushes, towels, nail polish bottles, water bowl… mom got upset, she kept telling the boy: you are embarrased! you are embarrased!
No mom, you should be the one embarrassed.
