Don't Pick

This is a cautionary shout out to all my peeps out there who chew, pick and otherwise mangle and mutilate the digits and nails of hands and feet. Don't do it. Don't nibble, bite, tear, rip. Leave your fingers and toes alone. Sound the alarm if you find your fingers crossed and inching toward an obsessive poke or pull of dead skin left dangling from a torn cuticle. Slap at your own hands. Sit on them. But don't pick.

I watched a train full of grown-ups picking and pulling and tasting and gnarling the tips of fingers this morning. As I watched, I counted. There was a grey-hair in an argyle sweater who kept his pointer trapped between his uppers and lowers. Do dentures have decent grip? He worked on it from Castro to Van Ness, when I stepped off the car. A woman with a weave and long nails sucked alternately on her ring finger and thumb, maybe cleaning the underside of her long nails or enjoying the rigid nail cave's feel on a cankersore? I took my own hands off the shiny aluminum bar and focused on balancing while I watched all these spitty fingers enter and re-enter mouths. I put my hands in my pockets and leaned heavily against the door until I could get off the train, climb the stairs without use of the banister, ascend the escalator with hands still stuck in the lint of my old rain coat, and get to work where I washed my hands, inspected my fingernails and got to work.

Don't pick. It's not healthy.