People Who Clip Their Nails In Public Are Very Bad People Indeed

An Atlanta man was recently arrested for grabbing some paper towels and defiantly blowing his nose in a MARTA station. To which I say: we need to turn our attention to the real criminals — the nail-clippers.

There is nothing more repellent to me than the sound of someone clipping their nails in public. Wait, yes there is: the sigh of yellowed, dessicated nail-parings littering the subway floor. I don’t know why I find it quite so repulsive — I clip my own nails without incident — but somehow when the act is made public it becomes unseemly.

This may be an NYC thing — friends assure me it’s not native to Boston, D.C., Chicago, Berlin, Munich, San Francisco, London, Paris or Philly — in which case, lucky us. While people here seem particularly prone to subway-trimming — and many seem to have handy mini-clippers on their keychains that they whip out as soon as their bottoms hit the seat — this is not a phenomenon that’s isolated to train cars. Not long ago, I was in the beautiful reading room of the New York Public Library when I heard it: a woman across the trestle-table was insouciantly clipping her nails. And with such thoroughness! Somehow she managed to stretch the vile business out for what seemed like 20 minutes. I could hear it from across the room, even after I moved.

I wonder if this is illegal. A search of “Public nail-clipping” proved unenlightening. But I call upon the law of human decency: if you’re doing this, please stop. I beg of you.