EXPULSION OF A TOE-NAIL RIGHT OFF ITS HINGES

The grand toe-nail, the essential toe-nail of a lady’s pedicure! The beauty of that gorgeous nail on your toe! I realize we shouldn’t take that seemingly ignored nail for granted. I envy you all with a nail on your big toe. Yeah that’s right. I lost my big toe-nail. No, not an hangnail. The whole goddamn nail!!!  *sighs*  This is my story.

One beautiful, hotttt, sunny morning in the city of Abuja, I woke up feeling refreshed and happy. Who am I kidding? I always wake up with a growl on my face silently cursing time for flying by. Ok, I’m deviating a bit. The point is I wake up but little did I know the excruciating and traumatizing pain that would befall me later on. The day passed on, like any other till that phone-call which came in and became a huge factor in the devastating loss of my nail.

At the time, I was in my mother’s room watching a sitcom. A friend called, I was ecstatic because it had been a while I heard from her. So the usual body movements were there like my left hand moving wildly whilst I talked, me squealing and shrieking at something she said, saying things like ‘’It is a lieeeeee’’, ‘’Are you seriousssss?’’.   

I didn’t realize my legs were also that excited and it was heading for a hard-as-rock picture frame on the floor set against the wall. The next thing was ‘’boom’’. I had stubbed my toe on the picture frame. I tried to mentally block out the pain like the Chinese Monks do but the pain overcame. I screamed, hopped on one leg, shouted a few cuss words. Then, I looked at my big toe and there it was, the nail was out but a little part of it was still holding on for dear life. 

My eyes popped out in shock, blood was oozing out, the whole thing looked gory, like something out of a horror movie. It hurt really bad and I nearly passed out from the pain. I told my sisters about it, they showed all this initial sympathy, then the teasing as usual began. 

My sisters told me I would never wear a ballet pumps shoe or sneakers everrr for at least 6 months. One of them sighed and said ‘’And you had the best toe nails in the house’’. I looked at her with this expression on my face like ‘’yeah you had to wait till I lost a nail to tell me’’. My father said it came off because my nail was already weak from too much spaghetti in my system. (That’s right; I love me some spags). The laugh was too much to contain. Abeg, what is the correlation between spaghetti and nails? Anyway, that is my dad, always full of humour.

So as it is now, the whole nail is gone, my big toe is naked, swollen, looks like a stump. I can’t wear shoes for now. The bathroom slippers is now my new fashion craze. So, anyone who is reading this, look down at your big toe and be glad there is a nail right there! Chaoooooo!