What Every Teen Knows (and I Don't)

I was in the men's room a few days ago.  I have gotten into the habit of touching up my lipgloss if there's no-one in there.  It was early in the day, and I hadn't even put it on yet.

Digressing....  My new routine involves bringing coffee to work.  Government office sadly means no free coffee.  I fill up a travel mug and sometimes just as I get to work it's all gone, sometimes not.  It all depends on traffic.

If I still have coffee, I also still have a twelve minute walk to my desk, so I swill coffee as I walk.

If I am out of coffee, or close to out, I pull down the little mirror over the driver's seat.  The light comes on and I apply lipgloss (sometimes with lip balm underneath ~ I think I get more shine if I do that).

If I do have coffee, I don't want to mess up my lips by drinking once I finish them.  So I wait until I get to the office and go into the bathroom to do my lips.

My place on the care/don't care scale still puts me on the side of "I care if guys see me putting on gloss from a tube" so I linger a bit if there are one or two people in the room.  If they're in a stall, I don't worry too much.  Gloss is good because if someone walks in while I'm applying I can generally "spread it around" by rubbing my lips together while I screw on the cap and put away the tube.

On this particular day, I had to use a stall myself.  There was a steady stream (ha) of guys using the restroom.  I figured I was out of luck.

Then I remembered what is second nature to most kids today ~ your phone is a mirror.

I pulled out my phone, and before I could even reach for the powe button, it went flying to the floor and skidded under the stall door.  The battery went in a different direction, as did the cover on the back of the phone.

Good idea, bad execution.  But after the phone was reassembled and restarted and I figured out how to turn the camera around, it worked pretty well.

Live and learn.

It's a better mirror than a camera at this distance. :)