Do you know what? I am a reformed fingernail biter. It’s true. Some folks are addicted to chocolate, others to drugs. Me? My addiction was fingernails. 

I mean, I would bite them so far down that the tender, pink skin beneath them, the quick,  would often become exposed…and then hurt like all hell.

For some unknown reason, I always had an overpowering urge to bite them.  And, every un-stereotypically, it had nothing to do with being nervous.  I just liked to bite my fingernails.

Maybe it had to do with boredom.  Thinking back on it now, I did a good deal of biting when I was driving my car long distances, or when I was just sitting around waiting for something to happen.

I don’t know. All I’m sure of was that, at times, while others were craving a nicotine or alcohol, I was jonesing for a fingernail.

And I not only bit them, I chewed them…and swallowed them!

When I didn’t chew them, I would position them between my upper and lower front teeth, slowly close my jaw to apply tension  to them and make them bend, and then have them spring out of my mouth and into the atmosphere as if they were shot out of a cannon.

Sometimes, I’d have a craving for a fingernail, and, when I examined my hands, there were none to be had. The tips of my fingers would be hammy and ragged, and I would truly despair because I had driving need and now way to slake it!

I have found four advantages to having fingernails :

1.       They’re great for prying things open.

2.       It feels SO GOOD to scratch your head with them!

3.       They sound really cool when you drum your fingers on a hard object like a desk or a table. When you don’t have fingernails, the drumming is muted, kind of like the sound of somebody softly playing bongos. But when you have them, it sounds like somebody tap dancing on tile.

4.       They make you look more grown up.

Here’s a question I have though that you fingernail veterans of can hopefully answer for me;  How do you trim the damned things?

I mean, sure, I know that you use fingernail clippers, but to what length do you trim them to? When I trim my toenails, I cut them back as far as I can and not expose the quick.  But with fingernails, if you do that, then you might just as well bite them, because then all of the advantages of having them are gone. Yet, if you don’t trim them back far enough, you’ll be trimming them every other day.

At one point, I had the fleeting thought that maybe I wouldn’t trim them. Maybe I’d let them grow two inches long and file them down to stiletto points like Fu Manchu.  But Mary Ellen quickly put the ka-bosh on that idea with one scowl and the word, “GROSS!”

That’s another thing. When guys finish clipping their fingernails, how do you get rid of the sharp corners on the nails? Do GUYS use nail files?

I’d hate like hell to be so damned proud of my fingernails, and then look like a freaking sissy if I got caught with a nail file in my pocket!

Oh Brave, New World that has such fingernails in it!

This is all new stuff to me. 

I’m a fingernail virgin.