The Art of the Spit Shine
Tried and True Ways to Fake Functionality Until it (Hopefully) Returns
By Britta
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
After Gretta’s tour through grief, hope, sadness, joy, and all the things that make life life last week, I was at a bit of a loss on how to follow up. I considered a deep dive through the mental health landscape of this global pandemic, but I’m not yet sure how that story ends, and, in the absence of some profound wisdom to guide us all back to the light, it felt a bit dark. So instead, I decided to stick to my strengths: exploring how to patch things up just enough to give the appearance of functionality.
This talent for spit-shining is how I sell things on Craigslist, and it’s how I get myself ready for social interactions. Here are my hacks for making your life appear functional and thriving even when COVID has thrown it in a Vitamix and cranked it up to 10.
1. A good blazer can work wonders
Don Johnson has been trying to teach us this since the 80’s, but I didn’t quite get it until recently when I saw a friend wearing a blazer and asked her if she was defending a thesis or giving a press conference. She looked me in the eye and challenged me, “look again at what I’m wearing.” It was only then that I saw the yoga pants and ribbed tank top in slightly different shades of black under her blazer. Since then I’ve tested the extremes of this accessory, and it just keeps working. Basketball shorts, t-shirt and no bra…add a blazer and suddenly people are asking “excuse me ma’am, which way to the coronation?” Send me pictures of this NOT working.
2. A label maker turns chaos into order(ish)
As someone who likes/needs things to have a Place, my label maker is among my top five purchases of all time. It’s little more than a personal sticker-maker, but the fact that I punched the letters on keys and hit the ‘Print’ button rather than writing the word with a sharpie demands respect, even fear. The labeled glass jars holding the dried goods in my pantry have brought observers to their knees; luckily, no one has ever stopped to note that the contents of said jars do not remotely resemble what’s on the label. There are few problems that can’t be solved even a tiny bit with labels, and once you start seeing uses for them you can’t stop. House a mess? Rake it all up, dump it in a box, stick on a label that says, “Random Junk,” and your soul will exhale. And no more confusion about whose box of Reese’s Puffs that is or what body parts will get chopped off if you touch it; it’s right there on the label.
3. Target drive-up orders bring the world to you
Stuck at home with three small children who should be being taught/fed/wiped down by someone else, wishing you had eight boxes of blow pops, construction paper, glue, glitter, a hand vacuum, a chain lock, and more Reese’s Puffs? Turns out you can have all those things, and you can have them without releasing your children into the wild. You just tell the non-judgmental Target app what you want, give it all your money, drive to Target, and they put it directly into your trunk. Bad news is you do have to let them see your trunk, but the good news is there’s very little eye contact involved, so there will be no social fallout from the carpet of blow pop wrappers or lingering vomit smells. And when you get really bored, it’s a new way to test the boundaries of what you’ll make someone else pick up for you at the store. (Tip: tampons and diarrhea medicine are *always* hilarious.)
4. Clip-in bows can erase shame from a child’s face
For years I’ve felt there were two types of moms in the world: the ones who did their kids’ hair, and the ones who didn’t. Whenever I'd see little girls with polished hair adorned with bows I would harden and try to turn my girls away like a mother of hungry children turning her children’s pained gaze away from a feast. “That’s not our life,” I would say, “we need to know our place. We need to be grateful that we have any hair at all.” But one day I accidentally bought some clip-in bows on Amazon and discovered I could be one of those moms by taking three seconds to place one in my daughter’s hair.
See this sad child, festering with disappointment and (possibly) pinworms?
A mere three seconds later, and suddenly, without brushing or bathing or medicating her, she is festering with nothing but respect for her mother. Because she has one of those moms. Me.
5. Glue-on nails put the ‘fun’ in ‘fundamentally flawed products’
A few weeks ago I saw these stick-on nails on clearance at Target, scanned my imagination, and could see no downsides to giving them a try. Just like in my imagination, I felt a little bit fancy when I put them on, and regardless of what I was wearing or not wearing, I felt Put Together much of the time.
(A word of caution, though; my imagination was a bit shortsighted. Much like livening up your home decor by buying lots of plants whose positive contribution to the decor relies on regular watering, this plan can backfire. While having perfectly shaped nails in a matte blue finish can make you feel like a minor celebrity, finding one in your hair in the morning will take you back below where you started. I discovered the sticky tabs don’t stick when exposed to the elements (water, air) so I opted for the glue, the strength of which became apparent only after I put a nail on backwards. Eventually they fall off… one at a time… through a long, awkward walk back to non-fanciness. It’s consuming enough that you can’t think of it so much as something you’re doing but as a phase of your life. But overall I still recommend it.)
I realize that in sharing these I’ve risked shattering the illusion that my life is completely put together, but, as Elon Musk noted, if the ship is going down and you have a great design for a bucket, you don’t keep it to yourself. So, here’s my bucket - my ornamental bucket into which you can pour the COVID-pureed sludge that was your life.
Don’t be afraid to share your own.