Books, judged by their fingernails

I was sitting on the bus. A young lady got on and sat next to me. She was adorned with some gold-colored metal—chains around her neck and wrists—and it jingled. Her fingernails were plastic, colorful, and long. Her clothing was certainly fashionable by today’s standards (I’m not really up to date on that). At least she smelled nice, though in a distinctly artificial way.

No sooner had she sat down beside me than she activated her large smartphone.

Up to that point, nothing about the scene was remarkable. The reason I’m writing this down for you has to do with what she opened on her smartphone screen.

Yes, yes, I know, one shouldn’t look at other people’s screens. But when someone is sitting that close and is that conspicuous—how could one not?

My gaze brushed her screen.

I paused.

The young lady was using her phone with her fingers held sideways, as women with extra-long artificial nails often do for practical reasons.

That was not the unusual part.

I would have expected her to open WhatsApp. Or Instagram. Or TikTok.

When I say I “expected” it, I mean it in the same way that you expect a certain step height when walking down a staircase.

When you go down stairs, your brain predicts exactly when your foot will touch the next step—down to the millimeter. As long as this very precise expectation is met, your brain immediately discards the information.

Only when a step deviates from your prediction does your brain suddenly and instantly bring this fact into your awareness: “That’s unexpected—what now?!”

Something like that, though without the panic attack, happened to me as my glance passed over the young lady’s smartphone screen.

There were mathematical formulas!

Complicated mathematical stuff, the meaning of which I didn’t understand. It had been decades since I’d learned anything like that. I only saw that it looked much more complex than what my son studies at school.

I didn’t want to study the contents more closely. The mere fact that I noticed they were formulas and not WhatsApp was already more intrusion into her privacy than was appropriate.

I quickly diverted my gaze. I looked out the window—and without looking at my own phone, I sheepishly turned it off. (I had just been chuckling over the latest “memes,” or jokes.)

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” as the saying goes. Don’t judge a book’s contents by its exterior design.

It’s a slightly odd saying, because of course you can infer something about a book’s contents from its cover. If the cover shows a muscular, long-haired youth embracing a swooning nymph, all airbrushed, then the book’s contents will differ from one whose cover shows a nocturnal, rain-soaked city scene with an armed silhouette in the foreground. That’s what covers are for—to give you hints!

And in everyday life, it’s usually still reliable to infer someone’s actions or even thoughts from their appearance. For example: what political stance might a female-presenting person with a short fringe and a nose ring have? Exactly.

But in that morning scene on the bus, I would not have expected that this chain-adorned, long-nailed person was studying hardcore mathematical formulas. It was like tripping on the stairs and nearly falling on your face—and I was glad for it!

It’s over, as I wrote yesterday. And sadly, that remains my assessment. All that’s left for you is the possibility—and therefore the duty—to decide who and what you will be yourself.

That’s what the lady with the ornate fingernails had learned, and that’s what you and I should remember: the masses are getting dumber, so you must work on becoming smarter yourself.