November 5, 2010
Fingernails are Complicated
Awhile back, I had tooth problems, as you could recall. Recently, I’ve started noticing an effect these problems had on me.
I stopped biting my nails.
For the first time in my life, I have fingernails. Well, on some fingers. Some not so much, since they were seriously bitten down that seriously. But I have some fingernails!
It’s really kind of fucking me up.
One would think that it would mostly be benefit. “Hey, I can pick up coins from the ground now!” and so on. But I’m not really finding it to be the case. I have years, literally a lifetime’s worth of muscle memory of how to do things without fingernails. Now I can’t do those things. Even typing this blog, from time to time I find my fingers hitting the keys in an odd way, because there’s a nail on them, and I’m not used to accounting for it. I feel like I can’t do the simplest tasks. It’s really stupid.
I mean, I’m going to try to keep them. But I’m not going to lie: I’ve been tempted to gnaw them off, not because of the bad habit, but just to let me work without having to adjust. It’s weird. Fingernails are weird. Someday I might master them. Until then, I’ll bumble about when, say, attempting to pull a paper off of a stack of papers.