My mom suspended her college education in order to have kids, and so I was five years old when she finally received her bachelor's degree. We drove down to her school for a tasteful graduation luncheon. I remember they had free soda. At some point, while my mom was mingling with her classmates, I took a bite of the side of my thumbnail and began to tear it away, but I bit too close to the cuticle and so, to my horror, about half the nail began to rip off. I couldn't alter the path of the tear. There is, at times, a point in ripping off a nail where pain ensues, and I had reached it.
I tried to pull the nail upward but that only made things worse. Blood began spurting out. I got it on my shirt and soaked the little cocktail napkin they give you whenever you go somewhere classy. I couldn't stop the bleeding and my thumb hurt like a bitch, so eventually I did the sensible thing and dunked my thumb in my Coke and kept it there for the rest of the afternoon. And yes, I kept drinking the Coke, because I was a little fat kid and a little blood ain't gonna stop a fat kid from drinking Coke. By the end of day, I had a wrinkled, puffy thumb that wouldn't stop bleeding. It looked like a corpse thumb.
I have many bad habits: booze, swearing, overeating, excessive onanism, etc. But biting my nails is the bad habit I have had the longest and the one that causes me the greatest amount of shame. It's a repulsive, disgusting habit. There's nothing good about it. At least when you smoke, you look kinda cool. No one looks cool biting their nails. No one's hands are improved by nibbling on their fingertips. There's no buzz. There's no high. You don't lose inhibitions when you bite your nails. There are no wild biting orgies to reminisce about with your friends. It's just you abusing yourself for reasons you have long since forgotten. (...)
There are ways of quitting this habit. You can buy that stuff to put on your nails that makes them taste nasty. You can cover your bitten nails with acrylic nails. You can get hypnotized. But as with any other addiction, you have to truly WANT to quit in order to succeed, and there is a terminal laziness in me that keeps that desire at bay. If you bite your nails long enough, you develop a form of OCD in which you begin to go stir crazy if you just leave your nails be, especially if you think there's an uneven part that needs to be edged out or a piece of loose skin that needs to be addressed.
This will sound like bullshit, but I often bite my nails in the hopes of IMPROVING them. Like, if I just strip that little part off, it'll look okay! And then it tears wrong and I realize I've eaten myself into a corner. Either I keep ripping or I leave the nail alone and I can NEVER leave it alone. I can't leave it hanging off my finger and I cant clip it so that it looks like my nail has a cliff face. Those are not options in my world.
I tried to pull the nail upward but that only made things worse. Blood began spurting out. I got it on my shirt and soaked the little cocktail napkin they give you whenever you go somewhere classy. I couldn't stop the bleeding and my thumb hurt like a bitch, so eventually I did the sensible thing and dunked my thumb in my Coke and kept it there for the rest of the afternoon. And yes, I kept drinking the Coke, because I was a little fat kid and a little blood ain't gonna stop a fat kid from drinking Coke. By the end of day, I had a wrinkled, puffy thumb that wouldn't stop bleeding. It looked like a corpse thumb.I have many bad habits: booze, swearing, overeating, excessive onanism, etc. But biting my nails is the bad habit I have had the longest and the one that causes me the greatest amount of shame. It's a repulsive, disgusting habit. There's nothing good about it. At least when you smoke, you look kinda cool. No one looks cool biting their nails. No one's hands are improved by nibbling on their fingertips. There's no buzz. There's no high. You don't lose inhibitions when you bite your nails. There are no wild biting orgies to reminisce about with your friends. It's just you abusing yourself for reasons you have long since forgotten. (...)
There are ways of quitting this habit. You can buy that stuff to put on your nails that makes them taste nasty. You can cover your bitten nails with acrylic nails. You can get hypnotized. But as with any other addiction, you have to truly WANT to quit in order to succeed, and there is a terminal laziness in me that keeps that desire at bay. If you bite your nails long enough, you develop a form of OCD in which you begin to go stir crazy if you just leave your nails be, especially if you think there's an uneven part that needs to be edged out or a piece of loose skin that needs to be addressed.
This will sound like bullshit, but I often bite my nails in the hopes of IMPROVING them. Like, if I just strip that little part off, it'll look okay! And then it tears wrong and I realize I've eaten myself into a corner. Either I keep ripping or I leave the nail alone and I can NEVER leave it alone. I can't leave it hanging off my finger and I cant clip it so that it looks like my nail has a cliff face. Those are not options in my world.
by Drew Magary, Deadspin | Read more:
Image: Jim Cooke
