Carol will immediately protest and say this is an unseemly topic to publish for friends and to the internet. I will immediately reply by saying, I take pride in being able to cut my own toenails. Actually, I began to think about this subject when I tried to cut my toenails this morning and found that I could still do it, although with pain from the knee that protests more than the other one. I realized that this might be the last time I will essay forth with clippers to cut my own toenails.

It occurred to me that the operation scheduled for July 13, 2004 will render me incapable of doing what I have done for well over seventy years.  The years before my assuming this responsibility and proud capability are blank and I am sure that my mother did for me as all mothers do for their younglings. It is only lately that I still say with pride, I cut my own toenails.

I once painted my Mother’s fingernails and did much of what manicurists do today in preparing her cuticles and clipping here and there while filing and making the nails ready for the “polish”. I took pleasure in helping my Mother in this job for she worked so hard and was, I thought at that time and ever since, unappreciated. Telling her that I loved her and wanted her to know I knew that she was a great mother and I was a good and self-sufficient person, was one thing. I wanted to help her in this little way. Of course, this service by me to her was abandoned when other interests interposed.

I think I now know why men go to a barber to have hair cut and sometimes to have a manicurist tend to rough and uncared for nails. Carol has suggested at times that I have mine attended to. I resist for, I can do it myself.  This is one of the defining characteristics of me that I have taken pride in (like cutting my own toenails) throughout my life. I used to smoke but never “rolled my own”. I now wish that when I did take up that filthy habit, that I had gone all the way and made my “coffin nails” from scratch.  There is a certain romance in the bag of tobacco and its string tag hanging from a western vest pocket that I missed out on.  But this is about toenails.

We humans need to be cared for by others.  Our simian relatives spend a lot of time grooming each other. We humans use tools for much of this in our lives. We clip and cut, wash and comb and check each other out to see if anything is out of place.  That is because we, unlike the monkeys and apes, wear clothing. Our hair and nails have to be in tune with the fancy garb we deck ourselves out in.

I loved the notion that I still could cut my own toenails as I did this morning.