Got DaYumm!! Two months ago, meybe more, I banged the ever lovin’ Sweet Jeeziss outta the toe next to my big toe on my right foot. I guess that’d make it my right pointer toe. Drove it right into the sofa post. Well that nail turned black as the devil’s pupil and over the weeks started raisin’ up onna count a all that dried blood that’d built up under there. Not only that, it started looking like the rear of the nail was raisin’ up and the left side was like, maybe beginning to de-tach itself. Now I’m no doctor but I’m a curious fellow and I took some science classes back in school. Way back. Cut up some nematoads and a few frogs at that. So I thought, “What the hell, Darwin, let’s investigate.” Got a magnifying glass, pair of tweezers, put the foot up on the bathroom sink and leaned over as far as my back and my gut would allow. Now Giamila, you remember her, the science lady I live with, she cautioned,”Leave it alone, it’ll fall off when it’s ready.” Yeah and Leif Erickson coulda waited for continental drift to bring Newfoundland within a day’s sail.
Down close, well sorta close, that nail was looking like the hood on an old rusted-up beater in a junkyard. I gingerly tugged at the front rim of the nail and it lifted up a tiny bit. When I did that, the top of the tweezers nudged loose some of the grit under there and what appeared to be teeny tiny beads of crystallized blood crumbled free. When that happened, the scientist in me said,”Cool!” The other half of my persona felt his member shrivel. But I couldn’t stop now! So I gently, gently wiggled the nail until it lifted up but remained attached at the inside corner of the side opposite the big toe. When I did that? I got a glimpse of the new little toenail destined to replace my former toe hood. Hallelujah! As an old geezer in his 8th decade who’s lost half a head of hair, mosta my eyebrows, a noticeable degree of my once exquisite eyesight, the ability to dunk a ping pong ball in a basketball net or drop into James Brown splits, this was a restorative moment! I felt interspecial kinship with the lizard community. My body was giving me a second lease on life. Well sir, at that point I figured, just give ‘er a quick twist and begin the next chapter. Buuuut, the sissy in me reminded John Wayne of the times I tried that with a split fingernail fragment and ripped that sucker clean up into tender nail bed. I decided to take Giamila’s sage council and give the remaining flap of skin chance to dry and fall off. So I grabbed a good book and beverage and figured I’d wait it out with a couple hours of literary distraction. A couple hours later and I’d lost track of the whole episode. I went to replenish my beverage and standing in the light of the refrigerator I glimpsed my newborn nail sans the beat up car hood. Arrrgh! The devil’s pupil has fled and awaits like a piece of shrapnel to be trod barefoot upon. Down on hands and knees I retraced my path and did indeed recover the once transparent protector of my toe. Too small to be fashioned into a guitar pick, it was thence flung unsentimentally into the garbage. There’s a new sheriff in town.
Fountain pen with DeAtramentis Document Brown and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens on Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook.