Grubby fingers

My fingernails are dirty. Really dirty. If I’m honest about it, they’ve been dirty for over a month. I tap them on the table. They aren’t exactly short either and make a hard clacking sound on the cheap and nasty plastic tabletop. Who am I kidding? These nails of mine are nastier than the table could ever be. What is it that I keep touching to make them so dirty for so long? The frequency and consistency of the dirt amazes me, I might add.

After a good cleaning, an under-the-nail-bed scraping and thorough scrubbing with soap – either before or after a shower, although the results appear to be better when this process is followed by a shower – a superior level of cleanliness is achieved. I think so anyway.

And then, without fail, two hours later (again, if I’m forced to tell the truth, I can recreate the pre-scrubbing muck in a swift 20 minutes) they are filthy all over again. The familiar dark coloured scum reappears, gathering predominantly towards the centre of the nail at first, but when left unchecked and unmonitored quickly and rampantly spreading across the entire surface. Yes I watch it, study it even.

Various shades of “dirty” are achieved. Who knew that “dirty” had so many different faces; a chameleon of sorts indeed. Sometimes it hints of gardening activities, gleaming a dark earthy brown. Other times, my nails whisper that I’ve been digging for treasure in an ashtray and show a dusty shade of grey. Finally, a disturbingly bright green suggests that I like to cut the grass using nothing but my bare hands on a rainy day. On the most interesting days a combination of all three is layered carefully, almost like a rainbow.

Whether the dirt is a cause for concern has not been determined by me yet. Sometimes I worry people might be staring, but I convince myself they couldn’t possibly be close enough to see what’s going on beneath my nails. The nature of the dirt and its origin remains uncertain, so I’m not going to make a decision on the level of threat. For now I’ll continue showering, cleaning and scrubbing, and I know for a fact that it will be met with unyielding stubbornness by this dirt that resides so lovingly under my nails.

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