watch out for bears.

I should stop biting my nails. I should've stopped biting my nails a long time ago. Actually, I should have never started biting them. Every time someone takes a smoke break at work, they tell me never to start smoking. I wish someone had taken a nail-biting break about 15 years ago and warned me of the dangers of biting your nails.

For a while, I quit. Not cold turkey, but warm braces. With all that metal in my mouth, I just didn't have a way to put my teeth around the nails and nibble them off. I had long pretty nails while I had braces, but no one noticed my hands because I had so much gleaming steel coming from the vicinity of my face.

Now my teeth look great, better anyway, and my fingertips are a mess. It's not like they taste good; if I had cotton candy-flavored hands then my habit would be justifiable. I have hands-flavored hands, and while it's not a bad flavor, it's not one that will ever be a jelly bean.

It's a fidgety habit, a boredom habit. I bite my nails the most when I'm watching TV, driving, or in class. It's not a sign of tension because none of those things make me tense. If it was something I only did when I was being chased by hungry bears, then that would be another story. Actually, it wouldn't be much of a story at all, since I am rarely chased by bears, hungry or otherwise.

I had a friend in middle school who thought that biting your nails was the nastiest habit ever, though I think she has since found evidence of a few worse ones. She said it was unsanitary. Sometimes I try to use this justification to myself in order to quit, but since I get sick only slightly more often than I get chased by bears, it's an ineffective argument.

They should make a gum, Nailorette gum, that makes you quit biting your nails by occupying your mouth with something else. They could make it taste like cotton candy instead of hands. They could make a patch, too, one that you wear on your upper arm. They couldn't charge as much as they do for the smoking gum and patches, but I bet there are enough nail-biters in the world that someone could make money off the idea. We could start clubs, too, where we all get up, say our names and admit our terrible habit. Then we'd give testimonies and talk about how long it had been since we'd had our last nibbling binge. We'd be an inspiration to the world.

I don't think there will ever be gum or patches or clubs. It's not a serious enough habit. It's a minorly irritating habit, but not life-threatening. I did hear a story about a kid who got appendicitis from biting his nails. All the little nail particles got stuck in his appendix, and it became infected. I guess that's about as serious as it gets though, unless you're in the woods and you wash your hands in the creek. You could get dysentary. Then again, if you're in the woods, you could get chased by bears, too. Maybe you should just stay out of the woods completely.

So I think I should stop. I hear that's the first step, admitting you have a problem or something like that. Then again, every smoker I know says they should stop. They don't. They say this after they tell me to never start and before they light up. I've never told anyone that they shouldn't bite their nails. I don't really give out much advice. Maybe I should start.

Watch out for bears.