My (very) minor mischief

Yes, today is a day for minor mischief. I don't know what it is--perhaps a trying week, perhaps a certain anxiety knotting itself up around my collarbone--but today I cannot contain myself. Or, okay, I can contain myself, but just barely.

As I walked past City Hall this morning, on my way downtown, I noticed that a 10-man protest was underway, picket signs and all--something to do with electrical inspectors, or a shortage thereof. Anyway, it was not the protest that caught my attention, oh no--it was the camera crew. On the pretty lawn of City Hall stood an honest-to-God news reporter, staving off the rain with a knee-length jacket (a gray color, inevitably called something savvy like "slate" or "charcoal"), speaking calmly to the cameraman as the wind did a number on his salon-styled hair.

The camera was rolling.

And my clear shot at the sidewalk directly behind the stoic reporter awoke something devious and wonderfully childish in me. I wanted nothing more in the world just then than to commit some playful act of mischief--nothing so high-brow as flashing or streaking, no, all I wanted was to run up behind the reporter and make a face, stick out my tongue and give him bunny-ears. Something like that.

Oh, but I stifled the impulse and went on my way, smirking. I contained myself, but just barely.

Later, at my favorite coffee shop, I ducked into the ladies' room and noticed that someone had written "INDICT BUSH FOR CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE" on the little chalkboard near the toilet. I rubbed out BUSH and wrote YOUR MOM. And then I chuckled to myself. So juvenile. So unabashedly immature.

Later still, I impulse-bought a cheap bottle of Royal Red nail polish and spent the better part of the afternoon painting my finger- and toenails a deep, glamorous, '50s starlet-style red. (I am usually of the "clear or none at all" nail polish persuasion, and so I made a spectacular mess of it.)

Now I am typing daintily, trying not to ruin my nails.