Put Your Best Foot Forward

Or, in Hansel's case, your grossest toe.



This is what happens a week after a 5 year olds toe meets a standard hydrolic powered public restroom door.
First, lots of blood and crying and bandaging.
Then a day later you note the whiteness of the toe and prepare yourself for the inevitable but don't DARE mention it to your 5 year old because OMG the panic and apeshitness that will ensue with the knowledge that my toenail WILL FALL OFF?
So you nonchalantly ask every morning How is your toe?
And you bandage it to protect his fellow campers from enduring the grossness that is his toe and the chances of it falling off in front of them.
And you pick him up from camp every evening to find his bandaid has fallen off again and the toenail remains.
No, it won't fall off quickly.
It will torment and taunt you for a week.
Then one day is will start to lift ... while swimming wading in a lake.
And you will pick up your 5 year old from camp and he will come hobbling over to show you Look at my toenail Mommy!
And you will note how it now resembles a clam.


Oh. Hello there.



Take a peek at my soft and squishy meaty flesh.
And He will freak out when you try to touch it.
And you will poke at it every chance you can when he is not looking.
And you will employ your husband to distract him by playing video games so you can try to dislodge it without him knowing.
And you feel your skin crawl when you do poke it and you see the skin beneath the cuticle area of his toe MOVE AND RISE.
And you will bathe him more than you have ever bathed him before hoping that the hot bath water with soften the nail and surrounding skin enough so that it will fall off by itself.
But it doesn't.
So you endure another week of the clam toe and do your best to secure it down with bandaids every morning before camp only to have it exposed and open-mouthed laughing at you when you pick him up until one day you declare THIS IS THE DAY THE NAIL COMES OFF.
So you put 5 year old in the bath again this time arming him with a pair of tweezers.
It'll be like performing surgery on yourself!
See if you can take it off yourself and if you can't Mommy & Daddy will take care of it for you.
(cue foreboding music: Dun-Dun-Dun!)
30 minutes later your son is turning into a shriveled prune. His toenail remains.
Bathtime over. The nail must come off.
NOW.
I want Daddy to do it!
Recruit chicken shit husband who is hiding in the basement to come and help.
Son sits on your lap. Husband removes dangling toenail from the tiny sliver of skin that it holding it in place.
It bleeds.
Son goes ape shit.
And now we wait for the toenail to grow back.


(And wonder while looking at this picture WTF is up with the fallen over pinky toe? Is it taking a nap?)