26 January - Nail Varnish & Paint dry

A’ propos of something personal, a friend reminds me in an email that people can change, even after 45. I want to believe her but I’m pretty sure I don’t really hold this opinion. I think we stay pretty much how we are, we just develop clever ways to disguise the bad stuff about ourselves or to sell it as not so bad. Or, easier still, we just find new people to sell it to (hence new relationships). Perhaps the only people we can’t fool (nor offload altogether unless we cut all ties) are our closest relatives. They always know who we are and so we hate them for it. But I digress.

However, just to illustrate why I don’t believe anyone changes (and you can give me as many examples as you care to, you know, former cut throat murderer now works with orphans and saves lives etc), I could say that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that it takes nail varnish 2 hours to fully dry. You’d think that by now I’d have internalised that information but no, I still smudge the goddam bastard and it infuriates me slightly less if it’s after a self-administered manicure than if it’s after one I paid top dollar fo at a salon.

The underlining thing this example serves to expose is that I have never learnt to become patient and … just wait for it to dry properly. This gives me the right to believe, as I do, that inherently lazy people, will never become a hive of action. But you don’t know what I’m talking about so ignore me.