My daughter and I spent an inordinate amount of time in a local drugstore.  We had to spray every test bottle of cologne on ourselves.  We sorted through greeting cards, too.  But, in the nail aisle things became serious.  What color did she want?  My nails are always short and ragged.  She kept hers nicely filed and as long as they would grow.

Doing her nails was a stress reliever for her.  The house would smell of nail polish remover for a whole evening.  She would paint them, look at them as they dried, and then use the remover to take the polish off.

She didn’t look at the cost, but I did.  So I would be in the cheap nail polish section as she looked at the higher priced bottles.  We went one night before closing and there was just one clerk running the show at that drugstore.  I removed several polishes from the cheap racks.  I had several bottles of various hues in my hands when I saw the orange.

It was October, her birthday month.  I juggled the colors in my hands and fought the rack trying to get the orange bottle of polish.  To my horror, it fell and shattered on the floor.  It was a mess.  We were the only customers in there, so trying to pretend we did not make the mess was out of the question.

The cashier heard the whole thing, and could see us in the security mirror.  Sheepish, I approached her and she handed me a roll of paper towels and a bottle of nail polish remover.  I went down the aisle to my daughter.  She sighed.  We each dropped to our knees and used the whole roll of paper towels and the full bottle of nail polish remover on the floor.  The orange smeared, and soon the whole cheaply tiled floor was covered in an orange glow.

We gathered up our nerves and our paper towels, and empty bottle of remover with an unbroken batch of polish bottles to the cashier.  She threw out the mess and rang up what nail polish my daughter had selected.  We apologized profusely.

Back in the car we discovered our clothes were spattered by orange polish, our hands were orange, and the remover smell made us both giddy.  I snorted out a laugh and told my daughter that the drugstore would have to get new flooring.  “We don’t dare go back there, EVER!” I said.

Once home, we opened the bag of polish and all were shades of remarkable colors and all were expensive.  There was one color missing:  orange.