How I Finally Stopped Biting My Nails
Spoiler alert: Drugs. It was drugs.
One of my earliest memories is sitting in the clawed-to-bits (why were they so clawed? Our dog didn’t do it? The world may never know) seats of my mom’s Volkswagen van before preschool as she hunched over my impossibly small fingers. Her hair was spilling over her shoulders, which it always did because it was very long and beautiful and I’m still miffed that I didn’t get that hair from her. She painted each of my fingertips, somewhat recklessly, with the clear nail polish. It burned because I had shredded my nails again, taking bits of skin with them.
I was three years old. Maybe I was four. And it took me less than a half-day of playing, reading, singing, and drawing in preschool to learn that while the polish tasted terrible—that was the point—it could also be easily peeled off.
Have you ever seen a smug toddler? I have because I have a niece who looks like me a little bit and who is often smug. Anyway, I’m sure it was very charming and not at all extremely irritating to everyone around me when I found this excellent loophole!
Sorry, mom.
There is not a time when I can remember not biting my fingernails. At exactly no point in my life have I passed a day without thinking numerous times about what is happening on the…
