Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Road tar is not a substitute for nail polish

Somehow, the freezing Colorado weather has me missing my childhood summers growing up on the Chesapeake bay. Then, out of nowhere, pops this memory- which I had NOT missed.


There were five of us kids and we lived in a very rural area of Maryland. The back-country roads were mostly black tar and they would get so hot in the summer the road tar would get hot and bubbly. We decided it would be fun to "paint" our fingernails and toenails with the black tar. We scraped the soft tar up and smeared it on all our nails (5 kids x 20 fingers/toes = 100 tar-covered nails). But the time we walked home, the tar had cooled and hardened. My mom was appalled/shocked/angry to say the least. She would not let us into the house until got it off. So we sat outside for hours with the hose trying to scrape, scrub, and wash the tar off our nails. As a reminder, road tar, by design, is meant to last a VERY LONG time. I don't recall how long it took to get it off, or even if we got it all off that day, but it sticks in my mind as a painful lesson for my siblings and I. I have never done it since :)

9 comments:

Panamamama said...

Hilarious! I remember poking our fingers in the hot tar on the roads but didn't think to paint our nails with it. I am glad I missed out on the black fingernail polish too.

Mandy said...

Holly! This is so funny! Love it!

Brandie said...

I love memories like that. Kids do the silliest things. Did your mom at least take a picture. I bet not! That is more OUR generation. haha

Mandy said...

Oh, how funny. Interesting how these memories just pop into our heads seemingly from nowhere. Wonder what triggered this one?

Anonymous said...

Funny memories! Thanks for the laugh!

robinsgothealth said...

Kids, we have the wildest imaginations! I once tried dying my hair blond with frost with a fiend and it of course turned out brassy yellow, my mom was so mad she made me go to school the next day frost and all, a very embarrasing moment to say the least, but I never tried that again.

Thanks for sharing

Melanie said...

Oh my goodness! What a painful mess!

Thank you very much for the welcome to BlogFrog.

Twilight.. Aww! I am SO excited about the new movie that I can't hardly contain myself. HeeHee!

Angela said...

Ew. That's horrible. Glad it finally came off. Checking in from MBC and I'll follow you on twitter too. I'm at @suburbanjung

Debra Howard said...

What a sweet funny memory. Thank you so very much for your visit this morning. I am excited about blogfrog. Hoping it will connect me with more people. Bless you!
Debbie

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