The Inheritance

The other day I decided to clip my toenails. I do this sporadically, dreading the task. I know the time has arrived whenever I hear a faint clicking noise as I walk across our hardwood floors.

I executed an exhaustive search in the bathroom, rooting through drawers and cabinets without success, and then found the clippers in the kitchen. I’m not sure how they got there, but after silently cursing my wife, I realized that the chances were excellent that I’d left them there six months ago.

I grabbed the clippers and removed my sock. I steeled myself for another battle where I chip through the beastly toenails like a logger from yesteryear hacking away at the edge of an ancient tree. But then I looked down at my big toe and recoiled in horror.

I was getting it. It’d taken forty-seven years, but it was definitely coming.

The Toenail.

I gazed with disbelief at the rock-hard thing protecting my big toe. Brown at the base, yellowing near the tip. Arching over and away from the toe as if in a desperate effort to lift off and fly away to safety. The thickness was unbelievable, like six Pringles stacked atop one another, fastened together with superglue and covered with shellac.

When did this happen?

My dad had this exact same toenail. His was mostly yellow and had a strange indentation in the tip, as if designed to double as a beer-bottle opener. It was a ghastly thing that rarely saw the light of day in public – Dad almost always wore socks and shoes, even in the heat of summer. The few times the toe was let out, like at the beach, it was unnerving. It was like seeing a corpse for the first time. And given how far the nail protruded beyond the end of his toe, I suspect that at one point Dad sat on the couch like I was doing right now – and just gave up.

And now I was getting it.

Well, so be it. This is the price of making it to the border of your senior years. And it’s a different world these days. All sorts of things that weren’t accepted in 1973 are now accepted, nasty toenails being among them. I’m not going to hide the thing. I refuse to give in to discrimination against calcified toenails that look like they belong to a dead dinosaur.

Yes, I’m going to “let my freak nail fly.”

But I’m going to do my best to keep it manageable, because no one wants to scare little kids at the beach. Which means I might need to purchase some natural-colored nail polish. Or maybe go down to the Home Depot and rent a power sander.

I want to cause the least possible horror to the beautiful people surrounding me.