N*A*S*T*Y

This morning on the subway on my way to school, I was sitting across (let me repeat this part - across) the aisle from some man who chose to clip his nails. I have always found this to be a disgusting habit. When I worked with the airlines, it was always a complicated matter onboard. Other passengers would show looks of disgust in first-class as some suit would start clipping away. Even on a transatlantic flight, which was a "first class - six seats - top service" type of flight I took home from Europe after a meeting, there was some gentlemen clipping his nails all the way through the dinner service. Nasty.

This morning, however, the man clipping his nails accomplished something more than my disgust. He actually HIT me with his FINGERNAIL CLIPPING on the forehead. That nasty piece of nail jumped a good three or four feet. And hit my head.

Worse, I was sitting there with my eyes closed nodding in and out. And then it hit. That certainly woke me up.

I yelped. Instead of saying something very New York-ish, like, "You nasty asshole," I let out some lame, "EEEEEEWWWWWWWW." The man apologized pretty quickly, and by that time most of the passengers around us were staring.

When I was standing at the subway door waiting to get off the damn train, the woman standing behind me said something like, "You handled that well. If it were me, I would have stabbed him."