The nail on my left index finger takes the worst battering; I’m not sure it’ll ever truly grow properly any more. Perhaps I need to preface that thought with an admission: I’m a biter. Or at least, I’m a recovering biter.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always bitten my fingernails. There’s no real explanation for it. I wouldn’t say I’m consistently nervous. I don’t exactly do it for pleasure. Hell, I’m not even hungry, and even if I was, I don’t think morsels of myself would be high on the menu.
If anything, it’s simply been habitual. Some stray habit I started as a child and never grew out of, like bouncing my leg for no apparent reason when seated or having the fantastical belief that everything will turn out fine one day. The problem with nail biting is that, often, only part of the exposed white strip at the top can be chewed off at a time. This often leaves jagged bits and slight rips veering dangerously close to the mauve borderline of finger attachment.
In recent years, I’ve used nail clippers courtesy of Christmas crackers to keep the jaggedness at bay, squaring off those unshapely bits and keeping my fingernails generally tiny. In even more recent weeks, however, I’ve managed to take this one step further by not giving myself a dental manicure, using only the clippers for trimming purposes.
Nowadays, my fingernails look not only existent but also fairly healthy. That is assuming that a healthy fingernail is one of a rounded rectangular shape with a notably visible white strip at the top. You know, as opposed to short, elliptical and exposing underskin.
That said, there’s still one fingernail on which my habit-afflicted brain just isn’t getting the memo on. Now my left index finger looks like the odd one out. The black sheep. The stumpy, jagged, curved, torn off bit of a loo roll when you didn’t quite tear along the perforated lines and got a bit of the next square wedged under your thumb.
Give it a few weeks and I’m sure I’ll be able to leave it alone long enough for little left indexy to catch up and look normal. But perhaps this is just another habit I’ll never be able to fully break. And maybe I’ll just have to get used to the constant pain of at least one unprotected finger ending with a couple of the nerves exposed. It’s either that or dig out a fiver or however much for that chemical stuff to spray on my fingers and condition myself not to bite them again. You know, like the absolute child I am.
When watching the parade of nations during the start of the 2012 Olympics, I was reminded of how Saint Vincent and the Grenadines sounds less like a Caribbean island nation and more like an 80s Christian rock band. Since then, I’ve discovered the music of Annie Clark, and thanks to her recording pseudonym, it looks like we’re part-way towards that being a reality.
Grenadines and Christian themes to one side, her return to the music world earlier this year seemed somewhat subdued with this, but I have to say it’s grown on me. The fact that I’ve been listening to the podcast Song Exploder, which recently featured this song, might’ve also helped. However I do find myself wondering how I didn’t initially twig that “other sucker” was a radio edit for something that directly rhymes with “other sucker”.
St. Vincent – New York
Jamie Walsh 
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