The Sad Love Story of Salon Nails and the TRS-80 Computer

Occasionally, I have my eyebrows waxed while an Asian woman repeatedly scolds me for the gunslinger’s mustache I’ve apparently been sporting about town.  How I can consider myself a woman, she’ll never know.

I wouldn’t submit myself to such verbal abuse if my natural eyebrows didn’t make me look like the love child of Brook Sheilds and Leonid Brezhnev. Which I am not, of course. Her name is Lilly and she’s a Scottish eyebrow model.

My salon of choice has a poster hanging on the wall I can only describe as mesmerizing.  They used to have two. I took a photo of the one seen here, but was heartbroken to find that the other had fallen and broken. I think that’s what she said. Either the poster tore, or there is a tiny boat in her mother’s esophagus that goes ‘toodle toodle!’ when she coughs. I’m not very good with accents.

The other poster boasted nails just like these typing on a 1980′s Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, which I can only assume is how she made all the money for this second poster. It was like a little success story unfolding before my eyes.

Or maybe it is a love story…

The Sad Love Story of Salon Nails and the TRS-80 Computer 

Our heroine begins as a secretary, toiling at a classic computer.  She puts aside a portion of her meager salary to have her nails professionally done, because even a lowly secretary deserves to feel pretty and, luckily, she doesn’t understand it when the salon girls mock her “ugly huge American feet.”

One day, I think it was a Tuesday, the boss notices her amazing nails and the two lovebirds begin a whirlwind romance that ends in Vegas where our heroine triumphantly holds aloft her winnings, sure her life will be nothing but roses from that moment on.

*snapshot* What happens in Vegas leaves Vegas as a poster.

The next year Radio Shack discontinues the TRS-80  for failing to meet the FCC’s Radio Frequency Interference rules, and our heroine’s brain has been irrevocably fried from years of exposure.* She forgets who she is and wanders onto the train tracks.

In the end, all they find is one finger. One perfectly manicured finger.

 

This is the TRS-80. I made up the bit about it eating people’s brains so I would appreciate it if Radio Shack would not sue me. If they did, I couldn’t afford to get my mustache removed.

If you think the story went differently, please share your version in the comments… I’m not TOTALLY sure this is how the love story happened…