WARNING: May induce vomiting. Reader discretion is advised.
It was a rainy Monday afternoon. PsychoVandal, my brother and I were lounging on the couch watching Season 1 of Heroes. Season 3 would be starting soon and my brother expressed interest in watching the entire series.
There was a knock at the door which immediately got my hopes up. I had only been waiting for one thing; my magnetic Save The Dates. I signed my name on the dotted line and quickly ran back in to rip open the package. To my relief, it was exactly what I had been expecting. I smiled as I held all 100 business card sized magnets, all shiny and new.
How was I going to package them? – something I hadn’t given much thought to. I ran to the computer and began playing in Photoshop. A designed post card I could attach the magnet to would do. That, of course , would get slipped into an envelope and voila! my save the dates would be done.
After putting together about 10 of them we decided to go show them off to our friends. Psycho waited for me in the car while I grabbed a few more things. I later stepped outside and not wanting to get the envelopes wet, I tucked them under my shirt. As I walked across the wet grass I slipped. This is where everything started happening in slow motion. I tried to regain my balance and failed. My legs slid under the car, I was on my ass, stunned.
I couldn’t bring myself to get up right away. I think after a certain age tripping and falling isn’t as easy to recover from (“I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”). Vandal quickly jumped out of the driver’s seat to help me.
“What happened?” he asked as if it weren’t obvious. I bent my knees in an effort to get up. It was then that I noticed. The second toenail on my left foot was standing at a 75 degree angle, almost perpendicular to my toe. “Like a car with the hood up” my brother would later describe it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A Stir of Echoes quickly came to mind.
Forgetting I had been holding something under my shirt, I stood up. All the save the dates fell into the puddle I was sitting in. It was then I started to cry. I made no effort to catch the falling envelopes. Luckily, Vandal’s reaction time was ten times my own. He managed to snatch them up with minimal damage but it didn’t matter. I felt completely defeated.
He helped me limp back inside so we could examine my toe. “Get the camera” I said. “No one is going to believe this.” The next half hour consisted of me taking pictures of my foot at different angles. I wasn’t sure what else to do. Do I rip of the nail completely, or try taping it down with a band aid? Was this worth going to the hospital for? I called InStyle76 who had trouble listening to my story. He suggested I tape it down and ended our phone call with “I’m going to go throw up now.”
I imagined taping the nail down would produce the best results. Maybe it would heal and my nail would reattach itself. What did I know? I tried to flip my nail down several times. The hood on my car of a toe refused to stay down. I had to rip it off. The job was already mostly done, cuticle and all. It remained attached by a thin thread of skin. My hands were shaking, probably from the adrenaline. I eventually pulled it off, and as they say, the rest is history.
That was 3 weeks ago. I can finally walk without limping, and no longer feel like a part of me is missing. Though, I haven’t brought myself to wearing shoes yet. I wonder if It’ll grow back in time for the wedding. Will it grow in strange and deformed? I guess we’ll see.
