A Jerry Springer moment

Since Jeff's departure, I had started biting my nails again (a habit I had kicked when I was about 12). So, in order to save my cuticles (and my sanity) I decided to get acrylic overlays once again.

So Thursday, over lunch, I went to get a fill. It was beastly hot, I was tired, aggravated with work, and just wanted to get in and out with minimal hassle. After I had been there for about 5 minutes, this woman bursts in like a whirlwind, saying she needs to get ner acrylics soaked off. She's apparently a regular customer, as one of the nail techs seemed very familiar with her. Upon examining her nails, he asked why she needed them soaked off - she stated that she needed a fill in badly, but she couldn't afford it this week (mind you, a soak off is $5, and a fill in is a mere $14... but whatever....).

Now let me provide you with a mental picture: she appears to be in her early 40's, is thin, with long straight blonde hair, large (implanted) chest, wearing denim short-shorts, a tight white tee shirt and flip flops. No make-up or jewelry of any kind, and has obviously spent too much time in the tanning bed. She's not unattractive, but looked to be very weathered (or as they say here in the South - "rode hard and put up wet.") The overall impression I got was she was trying to appear and dress much younger than her age.

She sits down at the station next to me, and immediately starts rambling on (to whomever would listen) about how she left her husband (husband #3) last weekend, and has been living with "the affair." The "affair" also apparently proposed to her, offering her a 3 carat ring, and she feared she might also be pregnant with his child. However, she intended to move back in with Husband #3 the next day, because they have a family together and are in the process of building a house.

Again, to recap, she has now been in the salon for less than 4 minutes, and already I know wayyyy too much about her.

At this point, she turns to me and starts yakking. She insists I look familiar to her, and starts asking me where I went to school, etc... gathering her to be at least 10 years older than I am, I simply tell her I didn't attend school here. She asks how old I am, and when I told her 32, she acted shocked, remarking that I looked 24. She then tells me she's 30, and I could barely contain my amazement either! (as I said, probably too much time in the tanning bed).

She continues telling me her saga... how husband #1 shot and killed her brother, as he was having an affair with her brother's wife. How husband #2 is from Syria, and tells her 8-year-old daughter that Mommy is going to take her back to Syria where they are going to cut off her head (???). And then there's husband #3, who apparently is fairly normal, but not enough to hold her interest, which lead to "the affair." Oh, and by the way, the "affair" was waiting for her outside in his 1982 Ford Ranger pick-up (which seemed relevant to me, seeing as he allegedly just offered her a 3 carat diamond engagement ring) with her 18-month-old baby.

At some point, the conversation switched from her love life to her profession... she felt compelled to tell me the house she's building is costing her $270,000 (which for the area of town we were in is quite pricey), and that it's a 5 bedroom, so she can have a home office (I could see that this was dangled before me so that I would ask what she did for a living, but I didn't take the bait). Lucky for me, she felt the need to volunteer this info nonetheless. She then tells me how she a commodities trader for a (large national financial institution, the name of which I will not mention). I had to try hard to stifle my laughter at this time. I was this close to telling her "You're lucky if you're a stripper on the day shift at the Diamond Lounge, honey!" (The Diamond Lounge being the SEEDIEST, SKANKIEST strip club in town, located just down the road from this nail salon).

And really, would a commodities trader who just spent over 1/4 million on a house actually worry about the additional $9 is would cost her to get a fill for her nails? Everything that came out of her mouth was suspect.

Sometime during her bout with diarrhea of the mouth, another woman came in, and (sadly for her, lucky for me) she, too, got dragged into this conversation. Without going into too much detail, it would seem that every personal tragedy that can befall a person in their lifetime, had happened to this woman at least once (sometimes twice). She was a living, breathing episode of the "Jerry Springer Show."

And I don't mean to sound insensitive to her woes. It's that I simply didn't believe them. Anything either the other woman or myself would say, she had done/seen/experienced. There was seemingly nothing this woman hadn't studied, worked at, been to or heard of. The most over-used phrase she uttered was "oh, me too!"

In retrospect, I suppose I do feel sorry for her. But not for any one of the numerous traumas she's suffered. I just feel sad for pathological liars... it makes me wonder what causes them to blur that line between fantasy and reality (and why she would fabricate such a dysfunctional fantasy world!)